By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum doesn’t want to stage a potential fifth fight between Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KO’s) and Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) in the United States. Instead, Arum wants to take the two fighters and bring them over to Macao, China, where they can dodge the taxes that they would be hit with for the loot they would make if the fight were to take place in America.
It’s no secret that Arum would like to open up China’s huge population of 1.4 billion people to PPV fights. By putting the Pacquiao-Marquez fight in China, and then getting the Chinese fans hooked on seeing Pacquiao fight, Arum can then possibly start charging the Chinese boxing fans for future fights.
“Juan Manuel Marquez to Macau? I don’t see why not,” Arum said. “Nacho [Beristain] is saying if Marquez fights Manny, he doesn’t want the fight to be in the United States because of the high income tax. What else could he be thinking of other than Macao.”
That sounds like Arum is wishing and hoping that Marquez will agree to have his fight with Pacquiao take place in Macao, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case. Why would Marquez want to agree to fight in front of a huge Pacquiao-friendly audience in Macau? That would be putting Marquez in a situation where he’d be going into a place where there would likely be few of his fans present. And that would mean that each of Pacquiao’s punches, whether they landed or not, would likely be cheered wildly by the fans in Macau. Pacquiao has already fought in Macao before, and so he has fans already over there. Marquez has never been there before, and he’d be perceived as the visiting fighter.
It’s more likely that Marquez is thinking of having the Pacquiao-Marquez 5 fight staged in Mexico in order to dodge the U.S taxes on the PPV loot and not having the fight take place in Macao. Marquez has already arguably been robbed three times in previous fights against Pacquiao, and I doubt he wants to risk being on the receiving end of another controversial decision.
It’s still too early for Arum to be talking about a Pacquiao vs. Marquez 5 fight, because Marquez still needs to get passed Mike Alvarado (34-2, 23 KO’s) in their fight this Saturday night on May 17th at the Forum, in Inglewood, California, USA. That’s a 50-50 fight that could go either way. Arum can stick Pacquiao vs. Alvarado in Macao, and I’m sure Alvarado won’t have any issues about having the fight staged over there, because he’d just be happy to get the fight in the first place.
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