By Chris Williams: Trainer Nacho Beristain says that Juan Manuel Marquez (56-7-1, 40 KO’s) is thinking of picking one of the other welterweight champions to fight next instead of WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao.
This is bad news potentially for Bob Arum of Top Rank because he was really counting on Marquez agreeing to a 5th fight with Pacquiao. It would have brought Pacquiao back up to 1 million pay-per-view buy level, if only for this one fight. If Marquez chooses another champion instead of Pacquiao, Arum will then be stuck matching Pacquiao up with Ruslan Provodnikov. In other words, a fight that would be lucky to bring in 400,000 PPV buys.
“We are looking at the possibility of a a fight for the welterweight title, but with another fighter,” Beristain said to El Universal.
Marquez could fight WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. for his two titles or IBF champion Shawn Porter. A Mayweather-Marquez II fight would bring in big pay-per-view buys, and I could see that bringing in at least 1.4 million buys on Showtime PPV. That would be a good fight. Mayweather beat Marquz 5 years ago by a 12 round decision, but it was so long ago that most boxing fans don’t remember the fight.
Beristain said he’s not interested in seeing Marquez fight Pacquiao for a 5th time because he thinks the two fighters have fought each other so many times in the past, and he also thinks Marquez already closed the book on the series of Pacquiao fights with his crushing 6th round knockout two years ago in 2012.
“I hate for Marquez to face him [Pacquiao] again, because they have fought 44 rounds,” Beristain said. “I think it’s already enough to leave intact his win than Juan had against Pacquiao, which was historic, and he doesn’t need to spoil what took place.”
Beristain is right, of course. Marquez already arguably beat Pacquiao 4 times previously, and fighting him now for a 5th time is really meaningless. Marquez knocked Pacquiao out, and lost two controversial decisions and was given a controversial draw. I had Marquez winning all four fights with ease. It’s for that reason that Marquez felt like he had no pother choice but to knock Pacquiao clean out in their last fight to make sure that the judges had nothing to do with the outcome of the fight. With the the way judges scored the past fights between him and Pacquiao, why would Marquez want to fight Pacquiao again? He would be in a position where he might need to knock Pacquiao out cold again in order to insure he gets the victory. That’s too much pressure.
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