By Chris Williams: 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) has one thing left that he wants to accomplish before he retires and that’s to win a 5th division world title. For Marquez to do that, he’s going to need to face the winner of the April 12th fight between Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley.
Marquez already fought both guys, and he feels he was robbed in three of his fights against Pacquiao and in his fight against Bradley. Marquez said recently that he didn’t want to ever fight Pacquiao again after knocking him out cold in December of 2012 in their fourth fight. But Marquez’s desire to win a 5th division world title is more important than his resistance to fight Pacquiao a fifth time, so he’ll face him again if Pacquiao somehow gets past Bradley.
“He wants the challenge of the Bradley-Pacquiao winner, he wants to make history of a fifth world title in five divisions,” Marquez’s promoter Fernando Beltran said to the LA Times. “If Pacquiao wins he’ll have the belt and Juan wants it.”
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is overjoyed that Marquez has changed his mind about wanting to fight Pacquiao again. While Arum isn’t saying why he’s so happy, it’s pretty clear that Marquez is the only guy that Arum has in his Top Rank stable that he can match Pacquiao up against that will guarantee huge pay-per-view numbers. Arum just finished putting one of his Top Rank stable fighters Brandon Rios in with Pacquiao and the fight resulted in just 475,000 PPV buys.
Arum is now going back over old ground by matching Bradley back up with Pacquiao in hopes of getting good PPV numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see similar numbers as the Pacquiao-Rios fight. Fans already saw the first Pacquiao vs. Bradley fight, and it was less than thrilling in bringing in over 800,000 PPV buys. But the rematch might bring in less because it’s a rerun fight instead of Arum bringing in new blood for Pacquiao, which is what Arum should be doing each time he fights instead of matching Pacquiao up against the same guys over and over again. You don’t see Floyd Mayweather Jr. fighting the same guys endlessly, do you? I wonder what fans would say if Mayweather fought Marquez 5 times or Bradley two times? Fans would show their displeasure by buying Mayweather’s fights, and he’d likely have to do something drastic to get his PPV numbers up to keep fans interested.
Marquez has a fight tentatively scheduled against the recently knocked out Mike Alvarado on May 17th at the Inglewood Arena in Los Angeles, California. Arum hasn’t said what would happen if Marquez loses to Alvarado in terms of whether or not he would still be given a shot at the winner of the Bradley vs. Pacquiao II fight. I would assume that a loss for Marquez would mean that he wouldn’t be facing the Pacquiao-Bradley winner, but then again I think Arum will go ahead and match Marquez up against the winner anyway. If a loss isn’t stopping Vasyl Lomachenko from getting another arguably undeserved title shot in fighting for the vacant WBO featherweight title this Summer despite having been beaten beaten in his last fight by Orlando Salido, then I guess Marquez will still be getting a shot at the WBO welterweight title even if he loses to Alvarado next May.
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