By Eric Thomas: In an article at Boxingtalk.com, trainer Nacho Beristain says that his fighter Juan Manuel Marquez received an offer from Manny Pacquiao’s promotional team Top Rank, but says it was a “miserable deal,” one that he didn’t want to take. He pointed out that it wasn’t an official offer, but he wasn’t willing to accept it for a third fight between Pacquiao and Marquez. The two fighters have fought twice with the first fight ending in a 12 round draw and the second resulting in a narrow 12 round split decision win for Pacquiao in 2008.

The money for a fight between WBO lightweight interim champion Michael Katsidis and Marquez isn’t there apparently. Beristain says that Marquez isn’t ducking Katsidis, but the fight “doesn’t make sense” because Marquez typically “charges $1.5 million to $2 million to fight” and they’re talking only “$1 million” for a fight against Katsidis.

As for a fight between Amir Khan and Marquez, Beristain says he declined that fight because Marquez isn’t a light welterweight. Beristain has a point. Marquez only recently moved up to lightweight, and looked bad in moving up two divisions to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year in a 12 round decision loss in September. Marquez would likely be still too small to fight at light welterweight. Marquez fought most of his career at featherweight and super featherweight until not too long ago when he moved up in weight to the lightweight division at the end of 2008 for a fight against Joel Casamayor.

At lightweight, Marquez is still winning, but he’s taking punishment like he never did before in his career. Clearly, he’s pushing the upper limits of his size capacity to fight at that weight class and would likely be much better off if he moved back down to super featherweight or featherweight, if he could still make those two divisions. The problem is there’s not a lot of big named talent for him to fight down there and Marquez wants to stay close enough to the weight class where Pacquiao is fighting so that he can possibly get a third fight with hm.

Beristain would like to match Marquez against Ricky Hatton, but doesn’t see it happening. But he says he would take the fight for Marquez at light welterweight. However, it would depend on Hatton being able to make the light welterweight limit, which is unknown at this point because he’s put on a lot of weight in the year that he’s been out of the ring.

As for this Saturday’s fight between Rafael Marquez and Israel Vazquez, Beristain thinks that Rafael will win. He sees Marquez stopping Vazquez in the 7th round. However, he thinks both Vazquez and Marquez should retire after this fight for good, saying both of them “came out of these fights very damaged, Vazquez more than Marquez.” Vazquez suffered a detached retina in the third Marquez-Vazquez bout and has three surgeries for the problem since then. His eye now doesn’t look good in looking at it and it leaves one to wonder whether his eye will hold up under the pounding it will likely take from Marquez this Saturday night.