By Chris Williams: Bob Arum of Top Rank says he met with 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez to see if he could put together a fight against him and Manny Pacquiao for September, but Marquez told Arum that he wants to see the upcoming fights between Timothy Bradley and Ruslan Provodnikov and Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios before he decides who he wants to face next.
Arum said to ESPN “Marquez said he’s interested in fighting all of them, but he’ll know who he is interested in more after watching them fight. We never discussed money…all he said was ‘I know I can make more money fighting Pacquiao than against the other guys,’ and that was the extent of the monetary discussions.”
Arum says he’s okay with whatever decision Marquez in picking out his next opponent. That makes a lot of sense because Arum promotes all of them, so the fights would still be in house Top Rank fights for him even if Marquez selects Bradley, Alvarado or Rios to fight next instead of Pacquiao. But Arum obviously would like to see Marquez bring his pay-per-view crowd to a fight against Pacquiao because it mean a fight that would likely generate the most PPV buys that Pacquiao has ever made in his career.
Pacquiao’s biggest PPV numbers were 1.4 million PPV buys for his fight against Marquez in 2011, but a fifth fight between them could generate well over 1.5 million buys unless boxing fans suddenly fatigued at seeing Pacquiao and Marquez facing each other time after time.
Marquez needs to be talking money when he’s meeting with Arum because it’s best to get it over with immediately so that Arum knows what to expect. Marquez should ask for nothing less than a 50-50 deal.
Whether than number comes out to $20 million each between him and Pacquiao isn’t clear, but it would at least give them both $15 million given that Pacquiao made a guaranteed $23 million to Marquez’s 6 million last time they fought in December. That’s basically $30 million that was in the kitty to be split, and a rematch should give Marquez a nice $15 million and above payday if he insists on a 50-50 deal with the Filipino star.
Comments are closed.