By Chris Williams: Well, it looks like former WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao will be fighting on December 8th against somebody, as his promoters at Top Rank officially put in a request to the Nevada State Athletic Commission to do a fight between Pacquiao vs. an opponent still to be determined.

Now that the obvious is out of the way, Top Rank can continue working on putting together a fourth fight between Pacquiao and now 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 8th. It’s pretty much academic at this point that Marquez will be the guy that’s facing Pacquiao yet again in another expensive pay per view bout with a likely price tag of something in the neighborhood of $49.99.

That’s a lot of money for a fight we’ve already see three times before. I can’t imagine paying full price to see the same show over and over again. I’d want the price to be reduced by at two-thirds at the minimum. I can just see these guys still fighting in their 40s and people still having to pay huge money for it. The problem here is that Top Rank doesn’t really have many options in terms of big money opponents to put in with Pacquiao, which is why Marquez keeps getting trotted out.

It’s like someone who has one good item to sell, so they sell it nonstop until people lose interest. This is why if the Pacquiao-Marquez fight brings in over 1 million PPV buys on December 8th, you can bet that Marquez will be brought back next year for a 5th fight and possibly 6th. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum could always break the monotony and finally put Pacquiao in with Floyd Mayweather Jr., but then the Pacquiao money train might come to a screeching halt when he gets battered and likely humiliated by Mayweather. For this reason, we’ll probably keep seeing Pacquiao fighting Marquez every once in a while until the public grows sick of it and stop buying it.