By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum hasn’t given up on trying to persuade Juan Manuel Marquez to agree to a 5th fight with Manny Pacquiao for September this year in a fight that Arum wants to put in Macau or Singapore. If Marquez says no to the fight, Arum reportedly will then turn to WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley and have him take it, provided that his head has healed from the concussion he received in his recent victory over Ruslan Provodnikov.
Arum is scouting out casinos in Macau, China, and Singapore for Pacquiao’s September fight because it will enable him to avoid having a big chunk of his purse taken from him in taxes, which is what happens when Pacquiao fights in the U.S.
Although Arum will settle for Bradley as an opponent for Pacquiao, he really, really wants Marquez for a couple of reasons. The main reason is because Marquez brings a lot of Mexican fans when he fights, and a huge portion of the pay-per-view money for his fights with Pacquiao come from his Mexican fans purchasing the fight.
With Bradley, he doesn’t have the kind of fan base that Marquez does. A Pacquiao-Marquez fifth fight will easily draw well over 1 million buys this time because of Marquez having knocked Pacquiao out in the 6th round last July. Arum no doubt wants to see the fight make as much money as possible and by getting Marquez to take it, Arum will be accomplishing his goal.
Another reason why Arum needs Pacquiao to fight Marquez again is to pump up Pacquiao’s status in the boxing community because he’s lost his last two fights, and he badly needs to avenge the defeats in order to ensure that he keeps bringing in lots of green in the future.
If Pacquiao keeps losing there’s going to come a point, probably soon, where the cash from the PPV fights starts to drop off with each fight/loss for Pacquiao. It won’t matter that Arum is having Pacquiao fight in tax havens like Macau or Singapore, the cash will still drop.
The only way to keep the money rolling is for Pacquiao to start winning again because there’s going to come a time where boxing fans aren’t going to be so eager to pay to see him fight him losing all the time.
It’s unclear how many losses it will take before that happens, my guess is boxing fans will continue to pay to see Pacquiao fight unless he loses another five or six fights, and then the numbers will plummet big time.
If Arum keeps matching Pacquiao two, those five or six losses could occur rather quickly unless he gets knocked out cold again. That would obviously slow things down because Pacquiao would likely stay out of the ring for another extended period of time before he fights again.
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