By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is saying that 41-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (56-7-1, 40 KOs) could possibly be facing one of his Top Rank fighters in WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao or Tim Bradley in April of 2015, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Arum says that Marquez will be sitting out the last two months of 2014 to wait for a fight in the first quarter of 2015.
Arum would obviously love to put Marquez in with the 35-year-old Pacquiao for a 5th fight between them, because Pacquiao hasn’t had a fight that drew 1 million pay-per-view buys since his last fight against Marquez in 2012. Having Marquez as Pacquiao’s opponent in early 2015 will pretty much guarantee at least 1 million PPV buys.
That would be a big jump from the low figures that Pacquiao’s last two fights against Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley brought in and likely a huge jump from the numbers Pacquiao will get for his upcoming fight against Chris Algieri on November 22nd in Macao, China. That fight has 400,000 PPV buys written all over it.
“Juan Manuel will sit out the rest of this year and then back in action in the first four months of next year,” Arum said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “He could fight a rematch with Bradley. He could also fight another fight with Manny. He could go a lot of ways. But Marquez is taking off the rest of the year and that is fine. He’s an older fighter. For him to take a rest is smart. But he will be back.”
Arum has the chance of getting Marquez for yet another fight against Pacquiao, but he’s likely going to need to give Marquez a bigger purse split than the ones he’s been getting for his fights against Pacquiao.
Marquez reportedly asked for more than what they were willing to give him for a 5th fight, and that’s why Pacquiao fought little known Algieri instead of him. The percentage split that Marquez asked for hasn’t been revealed, but it’s rumored to be a 50% split that Marquez wanted.
Given that his fights with Pacquiao draw huge numbers, you can understand why Marquez would want to ask for a 50-50 purse split, because he’s bringing in a lot of Mexican boxing fans to purchase the card, and if he’s only getting one-fourth the amount that Pacquiao is getting, it obviously doesn’t make a lot of sense for him to take the fight.
I’m not sure what will change next year in terms of a Marquez-Pacquiao fight. Arum is going to need to bump up Marquez’s numbers to a high enough level for him to say yes to the fight, and it might take a 50-50 deal for them to agree.
Arum has to look at it like this: If he gives Marquez a 50-50 deal, then it’ll be like Pacquiao getting a PPV fight with 500,000 buys, which is pretty much what he’s been doing lately, but at least it would give Pacquiao a chance to redeem himself from his knockout loss to Marquez from two years ago. If Arum doesn’t make this fight then he’s probably going to be stuck matching Pacquiao back up with either Bradley or Algieri in rematches.
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