Is Pacquiao making a mistake by fighting Margarito instead of Marquez?

By Boxing News - 08/05/2010 - Comments

Image: Is Pacquiao making a mistake by fighting Margarito instead of Marquez?By Jason Kim: Manny Pacquiao will be fighting Antonio Margarito for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title on November 13th at a still unknown location. Right now, it’s unclear whether the fight will even take place in the United States because Margarito doesn’t have a boxing license to fight in the U.S. Margarito has already been rejected by the Nevada Athletic Commission when trying to get his boxing license back and is now applying to the California Athletic Commission. He may not get it back them either, because they’re the ones that took it away last year after a plaster-like material was found on his hand wraps before his fight with Shane Mosley.

Margarito has never been a hugely popular fighter and never been a big pay per view star in the U.S. Juan Manuel Marquez, who has fought Pacquiao twice already, had great PPV numbers when matched against Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year. That fight brought in 1 million PPV buys. Since many boxing fans see Pacquiao and Mayweather as being almost the same in terms of popularity in the U.S., it seems like it would have been a better choice had Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum matched Pacquiao back up against Marquez rather than Margarito.

Marquez is the hot fighter right now, coming off of an impressive 12 round unanimous decision win over Juan Diaz last weekend. Arum, however, still won’t acknowledge that Marquez would be a better opponent for Pacquiao and is sticking with his choice of Margarito as Pacquiao’s next bout. I don’t know what Marquez has to do to get a fight with Pacquiao. Marquez has now beaten Diaz twice and looked good in both fights. Granted, Marquez lost the fight to Mayweather Jr. last year, but Marquez was giving up a reported 15 pounds to Mayweather and had to put on nine pounds to fight Mayweather at the 144 pound catch weight.

The added weight really seemed to slow Marquez down in a big way. I think a third fight between Marquez and Pacquiao would bring in similar numbers as the Mayweather-Marquez bout, with a minimum of 1 million buys. In contrast, I think Pacquiao vs. Margarito bout will likely come in far short of that number, probably close to the same numbers that Pacquiao pulled in for his fight against Joshua Clottey last March. That fight brought in 700,000 PPV buys, which isn’t bad numbers but not the big numbers that some of Pacquiao’s other fights have brought in against Miguel Cotto and Oscar De La Hoya.

Maybe Arum knows something that we don’t know and feels that Margarito will bring in more fans willing to purchase the fight than a third fight between Pacquiao and Marquez. I kind of doubt it, but maybe Arum knows something that we don’t know. Arum could also be matching Margarito up with Pacquiao because he’s in the same Top Rank stable. By putting him in with Margarito instead of an outside fighter like Marquez, it’s better for Top Rank. But I don’t see it being better for boxing fans, though.



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