By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s promoter doesn’t think Juan Manuel Marquez is well known enough for a fight between him and Pacquiao to sell big on pay-per-view. Instead of Marquez, which would be a very competitive and exciting opponent for Pacquiao, Arum is looking to put Pacquiao in with 39-year-old Shane Mosley in Pacquiao’s next fight. Mosley is more popular than Marquez, but doesn’t have a huge fan base. He’s probably much more popular than recent Pacquiao opponents Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito, but then again Mosley doesn’t fight for Top Rank as if this moment. Also, Mosley is fighting poorly now, and it looks to be a nice safe fight for Pacquiao and Arum.
Marquez, on the other hand, would have a good chance at beating Pacquiao unless the fight is held at the full 147 pound weight of the welterweight division. If Pacquiao fights Marquez at a nice fair catch weight of 140, Marquez has a great chance of beating him. That, of course, isn’t likely to happen if he were to get picked for Pacquiao’s next fight. He won’t get picked. Marquez is still fighting well, and even if the fight does happen, it will be at 147, where Marquez is simply too small to fight at.
Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer, has already said that’s the weight that Pacquiao will fight Marquez at if he gets selected. There won’t be a meeting at the half way point to accommodate Marquez and make it a more fair fight. But this is really neither here nor there, because Arum won’t be picking Marquez as Pacquiao’s next opponent. Unless Floyd Mayweather Jr. comes out of nowhere to take the fight, it’s going to be the 39-year-old Mosley who gets the call. He’s more popular than Marquez, but he looks to be almost totally shot and it’s not going be a competitive fight from a fan’s perspective.
Hopefully, Arum will discount the fight dramatically to make up for what will likely be a non-competitive fight. Based on how horrible Mosley has been looking in his last two fights, I’d say a Pacquiao-Mosley fight is worth $4.99 and that’s really stretching it. I see it as an exhibition fight between a once great fighter and Pacquiao. It’s not going to be a good fight unless you like watching old guys get beat up. That’s what’s going to happen and the fight will likely sell for $49 to $55. I don’t want to pay that to see a one-way slaughter, do you? They’d have to load up the undercard with every decent fight in Top Rank’s stable for me to want to pay to see this card. I’d have a causal interest in the Pacquiao-Mosley fight, the way people do when they see a car accident on the side of the road.
Arum had this to say in an article at Yahoo Sports News: “The casual sports fan doesn’t know Marquez, as evidenced by the attendance on Saturday. He’s a wonderful fighter and a great young man, but the casual fan doesn’t know Juan Manuel Marquez from Juan Manuel Lopez.”
It’s interesting to see how Arum justifies not putting Pacquiao in with Marquez. If it was the case of Marquez not being popular, how do you explain Arum matching Pacquiao against Clottey and Margarito in his last two fights. Clottey was totally unknown to the casual fans, yet that didn’t stop Arum from putting Pacquiao in wtih him. Of course, Clottey, a fighter who mainly just covers up with a high guard and doesn’t throw a lot of punches, was an easy mark and not much of a threat to beat Pacquiao. And Margarito had lost badly a year earlier and looked terrible in his fight before the Pacquiao. He, too, wasn’t well known among casual boxing fans in the U.S. and had never sold big in the America. Margarito was intensely disliked among boxing fans in the U.S. for his hand wrap scandal a year earlier. What Clottey and Margarito had going for them is that they were both fighters in Arum’s stable, which perhaps the only reason why they were selected. Let’s be clear, neither were likely any more known than Marquez, but they still got the fight. I think it comes down to Marquez being too dangerous for Pacquiao, and that’s the reason I think he’s not going to be picked.
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