By Chris Williams: Now that Floyd Mayweather Jr. is firmly out of the picture for a mega fight against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao for early 2012, 38-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (53-6-1, 39 KO’s) is speaking up saying he wants a fourth fight between him and Pacquiao, but not in Las Vegas, Nevada. There it is. Marquez just gave Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum the perfect excuse not to have to fight him again. Marquez should have thought hard before he said that. He’ll never get the fight not, not that he was going to get it anyway.

Marquez has already tried his luck fighting Pacquiao there and his record is 0-2-1, despite appearing to have won all three fights. There is something about Marquez fighting Pacquiao in Vegas that equals defeat for Marquez no matter what he does.

I sometimes think Marquez would still lose to Pacquiao in Vegas even if he knocked him cold. I could see one of those good appeals made and the KO overturned. But here’s the reality of the situation: Marquez is simply too dangerous for the Filipino to fight.

I think the only reason Marquez was given a rematch last November was because of his advanced age. They might have thought he was over the hill enough for Pacquiao to actually beat him. Now that they’ve seen that Marquez is STILL better than Pacquiao even though the Mexican warrior is almost 40, he’s likely out of the running for Pacquiao’s next fight and well behind softer marks like Lamont Peterson, Timothy Bradley and Miguel Cotto.

I really don’t know how you can sell a fourth fight between Marquez and Pacquiao in light of the three previous highly questionable decisions in the their previous fights. I mean what they call the fight “Pacquiao-Marquez 4: This time it won’t be a robbery”? There just doesn’t seem to be any point in the fight when the judges are probably never going to give it to the less popular Marquez.

There’s talk that if Marquez doesn’t land the fight with Pacquiao that he’ll vacate his WBA and WBO lightweight titles and move up to the light welterweight division (140lb) and look for the biggest fights at that fight. Marquez could possibly fight Erik Morales, Marcos Maidana, Timothy Bradley, and Humberto Soto. A fight against Amir Khan would seem unlikely, though, because he’s talking about being behind schedule in moving up to welterweight to keep his pursuit of a dream fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the future.