Juan Manuel Marquez – Mike Alvarado fight to be announced on Wednesday

By Boxing News - 03/23/2014 - Comments

alvarado63By Chris Williams: The May 17th WBO 147lb eliminator bout between the recently knocked out Mike Alvarado (34-2, 23 KO’s) and the recently beaten Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) will be officially announced this Wednesday by Top Rank Promotions in Los Angeles, California. The fight will be taking place at the Forum, in Inglewood, California, USA.

The winner of this bout becomes the mandatory challenger to the winner of the April 12th rematch between WBO welterweight belt holder Tim Bradley and challenger Manny Pacquiao.

The obvious question that fans would like to know is how does the WBO have a 147lb eliminator bout between two fighters – Marquez and Alvarado – who aren’t even ranked in the top 15 by their organization at 147? It’s a good question, but this is also the same organization that allowed Vasyl Lomachenko to fight for a world title this month with just one fight as a pro against former WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido.

This is also the same organization that has ordered a fight between Lomachenko, now 1-1 after his loss to Salido, to fight Gary Russell Jr. in a fight for the vacant WBO featherweight title. So, Lomachenko gets another world title shot with a 1-1 record despite the fact that he was just beaten. He got to skip over the top contenders for a world title shot not just once, but now twice in a row.

Alvarado has lost 2 out of his last 3 fights and was knocked out in his last fight by Ruslan Provodnikov last October. Why Alvarado gets to fight in a WBO 147lb eliminator with a record like that in his last 3 fights is unknown. Besides the losses, Alvarado isn’t even a welterweight. It’s pretty disappointing.

Marquez lost his last fight to Bradley last October, and now he’s in the position to get another world title fight if he beats a guy who isn’t even a welterweight. To say that the WBO is making it easy for Marquez to fight for a world title against Pacquiao is putting it lightly. They might as well be handing him a title shot on a silver platter.

I’m just surprised that Marquez isn’t fighting Brandon Rios, because that would be the coup de grace out of this. But then again, having Marquez fighting Alvarado pretty much is the same thing is him fighting Rios, because they’re both in the same boat right now in terms of their careers.



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