By Dan Ambrose: Boxing fans are eagerly buying up tickets for the May 17th clash between 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) and former WBO light welterweight champion Mike Alvarado (34-2, 23 KO’s), according to Steve Kim. The winner of the Marquez-Alvarado fight will be facing the winner of the April 12th bout between Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley next September.
Top Rank obviously would like to see Marquez and Pacquiao emerge victorious in their fights so that they can pair the two up in September in what would be a fifth and likely final fight between them.
The Alvarado vs. Marquez fight, which will be a WBO 147lb eliminator bout, takes place at the Forum, in Inglewood, California, USA. As of now, the only undercard fighter on the card is heavyweight Andy Ruiz Jr. facing a still to be determined opponent.
Alvarado and Marquez are both coming off of losses, which would make them entirely unsuitable for a WBO eliminator. However, boxing isn’t like normal sports where regular rules apply. A large part of the sport is based on popularity, so it really doesn’t matter that Marquez and Alvarado were beaten recently. They’ll still be fighting for the chance to get a shot at the WBO 147lb title against the winner of the Pacquiao-Bradley fight. Even if they were coming off of 2 consecutive losses, I still think they would be fighting in an eliminator bout.
After Pacquiao, #1 WBO, you’ve got #2 Bethel Ushona, # 3 Adrian Broner #4 Paul Malignaggi. Those guys aren’t going to fight a Top Rank champion, so it kind of left Marquez and Alvarado to fight the winner of the Pacquiao-Bradley 2 fight, even though you can make an argument that neither of them deserve to.
Alvarado was slaughtered in his last fight by Ruslan Provodnikov in losing a 10th round TKO last October, whereas Marquez was out-boxed by Bradley in losing a 12 round split decision last October. Neither Marquez nor Alvarado looked good in their fights, which is why their fight is so perfect. You get two guys coming off of poor performances fighting for a chance to get a title shot.
What makes Marquez look bad here is that he passed up a title shot against WBO 140lb champion Provodnikov to fight the guy that he just beat in Alvarado. It makes Marquez look a big like a cherry picker in selecting Alvarado, but you can’t blame him. Provodnikov would likely give Marquez a pounding if that fight were to be made, because he’s too young, too strong and too big for Marquez.
With Alvarado, he’s flawed, and he’s definitely beatable for Marquez. It’s not nearly as interesting having Marquez fighting a guy who was recently destroyed by Provodnikov, but it’s probably the only way he could get a crack at the Pacquiao-Bradley 2 winner other than sitting idle and playing it safe. That would obviously look bad, because people would want to know how Marquez is able to get a title shot off of a loss to Bradley. Again, this is boxing and the sport is way different from the NFL the NBA. It’s more about popularity in boxing rather than actual achievement once a fighter attains a certain amount of popularity.
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