Arum meeting with Marquez this week about Pacquiao fifth fight

By Boxing News - 02/10/2013 - Comments

marquez213By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will be meeting the Mexican warrior Juan Manuel Marquez this week to try and convince him to take a 5th fight with Manny Pacquiao this September.

Arum feels confident that he’ll be able to talk the 39-year-old Marquez into taking the fight despite Marquez’s recent comments about no longer being interested in fighting Pacquiao after having knocked him out cold last December in a 6th round knockout victory in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Arum told the Manilastandardtoday.com “As long as he’s [Marquez] fighting, he’s not a fool. Of course, he’s going to fight Manny rather than fight somebody for a lot less money.”

Arum may have to bump up Marquez’s purse split considerably if he wants to get him to fight Pacquiao for a fifth fight because it was really lopsided in Pacquiao’s favor last December with Pacquiao getting a guaranteed $23 million to Marquez’s $6 million, which would make the deal 74-26 in Pacquiao’s favor.

By now hopefully, Marquez’s management hopefully have taken a stab at who actually was purchasing the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 fight in high numbers, and if the Mexican fans were the ones that purchased the fight in the highest numbers, which is possible given the huge Mexican population in the United States compared to the Filipino population, then Marquez definitely deserves a 50-50 deal for the fight.

A fifth fight between Pacquiao and Marquez could easily be Pacquiao’s biggest pay per view bout of his career, and if Arum and Pacquiao want that to happen, then they’re going to need to sweeten the financial pot considerably to lure Marquez into taking the fight. If I’m Marquez’s management, I’m accepting nothing less than a 50-50 deal if it turns out that most of the PPV buys are coming from Marquez’s Mexican fans in the U.S. If they can’t determine who purchased the fights, then I’m still taking nothing less than a 50-50 deal.

There’s talk that there will be random blood testing for performance enhancing drugs for a fifth fight between Pacquiao and Marquez. If I’m Marquez’s management, I would take issue with the timing of the request for extra testing because there wasn’t testing when Pacquiao was beating Marquez by controversial decisions in the 2nd and 3rd fights, so why would there be a need for testing after Marquez finally beat Pacquiao?



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