By Chris Williams: Fernando Beltran, the promoter for former 4 division world champion Juan Manuel Marquez (56-7-1, 40 KOs), is hoping to get the winner of the August 16th fight between IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KOs) and challenger Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KOs), to agree to come to Mexico in late 2014 to face Marquez.
Beltran wants to help put the soon to be 41-year-old Marquez in a position where he can capture a 5th division world title. That’s one of the last remaining goals that Marquez has before he steps away from the sport.
Marquez is probably too small to continue past that to try and capture a 6th division world title at 154. Manny Pacquiao was able to win the WBC 154 pound title, but it was under the ideal conditions given that he faced the slow Antonio Margarito in a catch-weight fight at 150 to fight for the then vacant WBC junior middleweight title in 2010 rather than facing some of the guys that were ranked higher than Margarito at the time in the WBC’s rankings like Erislandy Lara and Vanes Martirosyan.
“We think there is a good opportunity for him at welterweight at the end of the year” Beltran said via ESPN. “Let’s see how things are arranged, but we would love to bring Porter or Brook or to Mexico. If we would have the chance, we would make an effort to give back the opportunity to fight for fifth title that was denied,” Beltran said.
Marquez is a good fighter, but he’d probably be out of his class against someone like Porter. That would be a tough fight for him because Porter would take the fight to Marquez on the inside and bully him with his weight advantage. Porter rehydrates up into the 160s when he fights, and he’d have a significant weight advantage over the likes of Marquez if that fight gets made.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum would likely not be pleased if Marquez takes the path of fighting the Brook-Porter winner in an attempt to win his 5th division world title, because Arum wants Marquez to fight Pacquiao, the WBO welterweight champion, next year.
Arum hasn’t given up on the idea of trying to get Marquez to fight Pacquiao a 5th time despite the fact that he’s shown no interest in fighting him again unless he gets a reported 50-50 split of the revenue. Marquez vs. Pacquiao would bring Pacquiao back up to the 1 million pay-per-view buy level once again. He’s not been in that area of buys since his last fight against Marquez in 2012. But Marquez isn’t all that interested in facing Pacquiao after being arguably robbed in his first three fights with him.
Comments are closed.