Is Arum misjudging interest in Pacquiao-Marquez 5 fight?

By Boxing News - 05/19/2014 - Comments

pac7169By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is waiting for the word from 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (56-7-1, 40 KO’s) to find out whether he’ll agree to face Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KO’s) for a 5th time. Arum has been highly interested in getting Marquez to agree to a 5th fight with Pacquiao ever since the Mexican warrior knocked Pacquiao out cold in December of 2012.

The fight drew 1.15 million PPV buy, and the chances were high that it might have pulled in better numbers if Arum had been able to get Pacquiao back in the ring in early 2013 for a quick rematch. But now too much time has gone by and I don’t see the interest being as high for a 5th fight between them. Marquez is 40 now, and he’s lost since that Pacquiao fight to Tim Bradley. And while Marquez won his last fight against Mike Alvarado last Saturday, it was a fighter who was tailor made for him. Alvarado isn’t a welterweight, and he’s not in the same league as the top guys in the 147 lb. division.

At best, Pacquiao-Marquez will bring in around 800,000 PPV buys, which is roughly the same number that Pacquiao’s recent fight with Tim Bradley hauled in. Boxing fans seem to be tired of seeing Paquiao matched against the same old fighters, and Arum should have been working hard to bring in new blood. If the fans were Arum’s guests to come visit him, they wouldn’t want to eat the same meal over and over again each time they came there. They’d want something different after awhile, and if all Arum had was the same sloppy joes, eventually the fans would eat before they came over and turn him down for his offer for food.

The Pacquiao-Marquez fights were interesting during their time, but it’s time for Arum to move on and bring some new life for Pacquiao to fight. If Marquez says yes to a 5th fight, this probably won’t be the end of the series. Arum will likely ask Marquez to fight Pacquiao a 6th, 7th, and 8th time, as long as the boxing public are still purchasing the fight in high numbers. But that is so bad to even imagine two guys fighting that much.

Arum needs to try and find a way to match Pacquiao against some newer guys like Ruslan Provodnikov or Terence Crawford. I’d rather see those guys fighting Pacquiao at this point than Marquez. It’s not that Marquez isn’t a great fighter, but they’ve just fought way too many times already and it’s redundant.

Arum is already talking about putting the Pacquiao-Marquez 5 fight in Macao, China. The chances of Marquez falling in line with that idea are slim. But if Marquez say yes to that idea, it’ll send a strong message of how badly Marquez wants the fight with Pacquiao. Marquez is in the driver’s seat in terms of the one calling the shots. They need him and not the other way around. Pacquiao no longer has anyone left that will bring in PPV buys. Marquez is the only one left now.



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