By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has already met with Juan Manuel Marquez about putting a fight together between him and Arum’s #1 money fighter Manny Pacquiao. Arum knows what the ballpark figure is that Marquez wants, and he’s going to see if he can make that happen for September.
Arum said to the Manila Standard “we’ve had conversations but these things take time and they are delicate…compensation is what I’m working on…I don’t make alternate plans. I’m confident both will agree to fight each other.”
The last fight between Pacquiao and Marquez last December generated $29 million for the two fighters with Pacquiao getting the lion’s share of the dough with a split of $23 million to Marquez’s mere $6 million. Marquez’s starting point for the negotiations for a fifth fight is likely to be in the neighborhood of $10 million, but with a possibility of $40 million that could go to the two fighters for this bout due to the high popularity, there’s no reason why both fighters can’t get close to $20 million if we’re talking a 50-50 deal.
If not, then Marquez need to consider walking away unless he’s okay with Pacquiao getting a huge advantage in the cut. I don’t see why Marquez should accept less than a 50-50 deal when it’s clear that a lot of the pay-per-view money for the Pacquiao-Marquez fights are coming from Mexican fans that are interested in seeing Marquez fight.
Look at the numbers’ Pacquiao brought in for his fight against Joshua Clottey. 660,000 PPV buys. In his fights with Marquez those numbers were doubled, so you have to give Marquez the credit for the numbers being much higher.
How much Marquez gets for this fight will come down to how brave he is in negotiating. If he’s willing to walk away if he doesn’t get his asking price, I can see him getting a great deal out of this fight, perhaps a 50-50 deal. But if he caves in and is just happy to get $10 million, then we’ll likely see Pacquiao get the same 76-24 percentage cut that he had last time he fought Marquez because their fifth fight will likely generate a lot more money than their previous one.
Marquez needs to be thinking big when he negotiates with Arum because even if Marquez gets $10 million, we’ll still likely see Pacquiao with a huge advantage over him in terms of his split. If Pacquiao made $23 million guaranteed last time, then this time we could see him making close to $30 million due to the added interest in this fight.
Marquez should stand firm and say he wants nothing less than a 50-50 deal. That’s the way he should do it, and if he doesn’t get it then he should be prepared to walk away from boxing. He won’t get a lot of money fighting guys like Tim Bradley or Brandon Rios, and neither will Pacquiao. Those fights are completely dead ones. The only big fight out there is between Pacquiao and Marquez, given that Floyd Mayweather Jr. will never face Pacquiao.
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