By Chris Williams: Juan Manuel Marquez wants to fight WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley again, but it looks like Bob Arum of Top Rank has other ideas for Bradley. Arum’s basically giving it away that Bradley will be Pacquiao’s next opponent on April 12th by saying that Bradley wants to fight Pacquiao again.
Arum really wanted Marquez to be a part of the Pacquiao sweepstakes for a 5th fight between them. No doubt Marquez is the only guy that Arum had available to match against Pacquiao that could bring in huge PPV buys. The rest of the guys that Arum has in his stable, such as Tim Bradley, Mike Alvarado, Brandon Rios, and Ruslan Provodnikov, are guys that will likely result in low PPV buys of 475,000 to 500,000 numbers.
Without Marquez or a Floyd Mayweather, I have a feeling that Pacquiao’s days of being a huge PPV fighter are pretty much finished. That’s not his fault. It’s more of a product of Arum not having the bodies to put in with him that the boxing public gives a fig about.
“The guy he [Marquez] wants to fight is Bradley, again, but Bradley would rather fight Manny,” Arum said to ESPN. “Marquez is gonna fight but that’s my partner Fernando Beltran’s job, to pin him down on what he wants to do. But Marquez will probably fight late in the Spring.”
Of course, Marquez isn’t going to get the Bradley fight, because Arum is going to use Bradley for Pacquiao next in April. There previous fight draw around 800,000 buys in 2012, which sound good compared to the horrible 475,000 buys that Pacquiao got for Arum’s stable fighter Brandon Rios last November. But the thing is boxing fans aren’t going to be excited about seeing a Pacquiao-Bradley fight again. They already saw that fight, and I believes this is going to be another huge disappointment in terms of buys for Arum.
Believe me, the poor numbers that came from the Pacquiao-Rios fight had nothing to do with the fight being staged in Macao, China. Fans just didn’t want to pay to see a terrible mismatch. I see the same thing happening with Pacquiao vs. Bradley II. Arum might as well stage this fight fight in Macao as well, because it’s not going to sell. At least if Arum stages the fight in China, Pacquiao can save on the tax money that is taken out.
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