By Chris Williams: A fight between Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) and WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (29-0, 12 KO’s) is being talked about for September 14th at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to Fightnews.com.
Marquez says he doesn’t want to fight Manny Pacquiao next, and prefers a fight with Bradley because it gives him the opportunity to win a fifth world title. Bradley also reportedly likes the idea of fighting Marquez first, and then facing Pacquiao afterwards in order to make the fight a bigger one.
It would make Bradley look better in the eyes of boxing fans by him beating Pacquiao’s conqueror and then turning around and fighting Pacquiao immediately afterwards if he can get the fight.
The Marquez-Bradley could be announced any day now. This is a fight that could go either way. Bradley didn’t look good in his last fight against Ruslan Provodnikov in a fight where Bradley was badly hurt several times in the fight. Bradley was able to out-box Provodnikov in most of the rounds to get the win, but he ended up getting knocked down in the 12th and was on the verge of being stopped. Bradley couldn’t count on out-boxing Marquez the same way he did Pacquiao and Provodnikov because it’s extremely hard to out-box Marquez.
Where does this leave the Filipino Pacquiao? Well, we’re already hearing that him and Mike Alvarado are likely to be facing each other in October in Macau, China with former two-time Chinese Olympic Gold medalist Zou Shiming fighting in the co-feature bout in a scheduled 6-round bout. Shiming is rumored to be making $500,000 for that fight.
What’s unclear is who Shiming be facing for that kind of money and whether Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will be able to televise the fight to Chinese audiences on pay-per-view. Arum said he wants to monetize the fights shown to Chinese audiences and it’ll be interesting to see if he tries that with Shiming’s second fight of his pro career or if Arum will wait until he has the Chinese fans hooked on seeing him by first getting them interested in him by showing his fights for free and then switching to PPV once he’s got a huge fan base. There are reports that 200 million Chinese watched Shiming’s recent fight in his pro debut, but if Arum can charge the Chinese fans between $5 to $10 for pay per view, he’ll make a ton of loot.
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