By Dan Ambose: If Juan Manuel Marquez wants a third fight with Manny Pacquiao, he’s going to have to fight and beat some of the top light welterweights and some welterweights as well. In an article by Dan Rafael of ESPN, Top Rank Promotion Bob Arum had this to say about Marquez fighting Pacquiao in the future:

“Marquez is a terrific kid and a terrific fighter, but he’s a smaller-weight fighter. He demonstrated that at the higher weight he can’t handle it [when he lost every round to Floyd Mayweather at welterweight. Now, if that perception is incorrect, let Marquez go fight a bigger guy and prove that he belongs with Manny at a higher weight. Let him go fight Andre Berto or [Joshua] Clottey, Tim Bradley or [Devon] Alexander. If he beats one of those four guys, he can say, ‘I belong with Manny at the higher weight.”

This is rather disappointing news if you were looking forward to seeing Pacquiao and Marquez mix it up for a third time. It’s hard to understand what Arum is talking about, because Marquez fought Pacquiao so effectively in their two previous fights.

Of course, those fights took place at the lower weights and Pacquiao has since bulked up quite a bit, but a fight between Marquez and Pacquiao would still likely be competitive and it would also probably do fairly well in terms of pay per view buys.

How can you say that it wouldn’t do as well as Pacquiao’s last fight against Joshua Clottey, because Marquez is clearly better known than him. A third fight between Marquez and Pacquiao would at least bring in a minumum of 800,000 you would think. But it’s a fight that boxing fans want to see and its also a fight that Marquez, a pound for pound star boxer, deserves.

How is that Antonio Margarito is being given a fight against Pacquiao? Margarito may have been one of the best fighters in the welterweight division in the past, but he looked bad in losing to Shane Mosley last year and didn’t look good in beating Roberto Garcia in his comeback fight this year.

And with the hand wrap issue still having boxing fans turned off towards Margarito, you have to wonder what Arum was thinking when he decided to go with Margarito rather than a third fight between Pacquiao and Marquez.

Arum is obviously looking at how Marquez did in his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year as reasoning why he thinks that Marquez would do poorly against Pacquiao at the higher weights. However, we don’t even know how Pacquiao would do against Mayweather.

Pacquiao may even get beat much worse than Marquez, because Pacquiao would be coming right at Mayweather all night long and presenting all kinds of opportunities for Mayweather to land counter shots and make Pacquiao look really bad in doing so.

Marquez was hit a lot in his loss to Mayweather, but he did a good job of limiting a lot of the shots that Mayweather could have landed had he been as aggressive as Pacquiao.