Marquez: I’m not interested in Pacquiao rematch

By Boxing News - 09/22/2015 - Comments

marquez777aBy Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has talked recently of adding 42-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez’s name in the hat for a fifth fight against his fighter Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) in early 2016. Marquez says he’s absolutely not interested in facing the 36-year-old Pacquiao again.

Arum is trying to find an opponent for Pacquiao, and he has a list of Amir Khan, Kell Brook and Marquez (56-7-1, 40 KOs). According to Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, the list is only of those three fighters. However, Arum has mentioned Terence Crawford and Lucas Matthysse recently as two other fighters he’s going to make his pick from.

Marquez is still currently rehabbing his injured knee that he hurt over a year ago in his fight against Mike Alvarado in May of 2014. The injury is healing very, very slowly, and it’s unclear if it will ever heal in time for Marquez to continue his career. At 42, Marquez doesn’t have years and years to rehab his knee. He’s slowly aging out of the sport.

Unless he’s interested in following 50-year-old Bernard Hopkins’ path of sticking around until he’s a half century old, I think Marquez will likely call time on his career soon.

“I think they [Top Rank and Pacquiao] are interested, but not me,” Marquez said to ESPN Deportes about a fight between him and Pacquiao in 2016.

This has got to be crushing news for Arum that Marquez has no interest for fighting Pacquiao again, because he’s the only guy in his list that would guarantee a large amount of pay-per-view buys. You can’t guarantee a lot of buys if Pacquiao fights Khan, Crawford, Matthysse or Brook.

I think Khan might bring in the most buys from his British fans in the UK, but I don’t think the U.S fans would be at all interested in Pacquiao-Khan. It would be a fight that would only attract interest from the hardcore boxing fans, and there aren’t enough of them go guarantee success for Pacquiao and Arum.

Instead of Arum finding success by having one of those guys as Pacquiao’s opponent, he’d likely only break even. But what would be worse is that Pacquiao will probably get beaten again. Khan, Crawford, Brook or Matthysse would have Pacquiao’s number.

Marquez plans on making an ultimate decision whether to continue his career or not in October. Pacquiao has already decided to continue his own career despite suffering a bad shoulder injury in his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 2nd.

Pacquiao has already had shoulder surgery, and he’s going through rehab currently. Arum is waiting for Pacquiao’s doctor to give him a physical examination and give clearance for him to fight in 2016. Once Arum gets the word from the doctor, he’ll go ahead and pick out an opponent for Pacquiao and put the fight together.

One gets the sense that Arum likely already has the fighter in mind who he wants to put in with Pacquiao. Marquez would have been a huge favorite to get the fight with Pacquiao if he were interested, but he doesn’t want to fight Pacquiao a fifth time. Marquez stopped Pacquiao in the 6th round in 2012 in their fourth encounter.

Marquez nailed Pacquiao with a crushing right hand that knocked the Filipino clean out with him winding up face first on the canvas fast asleep. After that fight, Marquez said he didn’t want to fight Pacquiao a fifth time because he felt that four times was more than enough.

Marquez, and many boxing fans, feel that he was robbed of victories in his first three fights with Pacquiao. Marquez obviously doesn’t want to take any chances of finding himself on the losing end of yet another controversial decision.

If Arum really wants to draw in the fans then he should match Pacquiao up with IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. That’s a fight that would bring in a great deal of money, and it would attract tons of fans to the fight. They could stage it at the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, and fill the entire 90,000 seat stadium to the brim. I think the fans would pour in to see that fight because it would be a fight where Pacquiao would be a huge underdog.



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