By Chris Williams: Bob Arum of Top Rank likes the idea of matching Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) up against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao for later this year, because Marquez is really one of the last guys that Arum has in his Top Rank stable that he can match against Pacquiao and bring in reasonably big pay-per-view numbers.
If Mike Alvarado, a fighter without a huge fan base, beats Marquez in their fight tomorrow night at the Forum in Inglewood, California, it’ll likely mean that Pacquiao’s next fight will bring in far less than 1 million PPV buys once again. The difference between Marquez fighting Pacquiao and Alvarado facing him are fairly huge. That’s why it’s crucial that Marquez win tomorrow night for Pacquiao’s next fight to do well on PPV.
It’s probable that if Alvarado upsets things by beating Marquez on Saturday night, Bob Arum will choose not to put Alvarado in with Pacquiao next, even though he said the winner of the fight would get a fight against Pacquiao. Alvarado isn’t a big enough name, and Arum would be looking at another disappointing fight as far as PPV buys go. I see Alvarado instead being matched against the likes of Tim Bradley, and that’ll be his reward instead of a fight against Pacquiao.
Bradley, a Top Rank fighter too, needs an opponent, and he’s in the same boat as Pacquiao is with him having few options for important fights with the limited fighters in Arum’s Top Rank stable. Arum will likely match Pacquiao up against the winner of the June 7th fight between Sergio Martinez and Miguel Cotto if he can get the winner to face Pacquiao. A Pacquiao-Cotto 2 or Pacquiao-Martinez fight would be a huge match-up that would surely bring in over 1 million buys and that would make Arum very, very happy.
Arum is trying to re-sign Pacquiao to Top Rank, but it might prove difficult to do if Pacquiao’s final fight of his Top Rank contract in 2014 is a dud in terms of PPV buys. If Pacquiao sees yet another one of his fights fail to bring in a lot of buys, he could decide that he would be better off leaving Top Rank to sign up with Golden Boy Promotions or another promotional company. Golden Boy has a massive amount of fighters that Pacquiao could fight, and likely bring in over 1 million PPV buys for each of his fights. Pacquiao vs. Amir Khan, Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Lucas Matthysse, Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman and Lamont Peterson would all be big fights.
Pacquiao is still a popular fighter, but with the match-making that’s been done for him in the last three years, it’s not surprising that his fights are bringing in less and less numbers. With Pacquiao being matched against guys like Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley, how do you expect him to bring in over 1 million buys with those guys? Arum shouldn’t have wasted his time in matching Pacquiao back up with Bradley again after their first fight brought in less than 900,000 buys.
That right there should have told Arum that there was little chance that Pacquiao’s rematch with Bradley would do well, yet Arum went ahead with the fight anyway, largely because he really had no one else in his Top Rank stable to match against Pacquiao. That’s how things are. That’s why Marquez is so important for Arum in order to give Pacquiao an opponent that will bring in something close to 1 million PPV buys. I doubt that the boxing public will want to see the Pacquiao-Marquez 5 fight as much as they did with their previous two fights, but the fight will still do much better than Pacquiao’s last two fights against Rios and Bradley.
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