By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has reasons why he doesn’t want Pacquiao to fight Juan Manuel Marquez and Andre Berto, and why he prefers the badly fading 39-year-old Shane Mosley for Pacquiao’s next fight. Mosley has looked poor recently in his last two fights, but Arum seems only concerned that the boxing public knows his name and isn’t as familiar with Marquez or Berto.

It is kind of sad if that’s the only reason for not matching Pacquiao up with Marquez or Berto, because in that case, why did Arum just finish matching Pacquiao up with his badly struggling Top Rank Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito? Those were Pacquiao’s last two fights, and few people in the United States knew either of those fighters, but it didn’t stop Arum from putting them in with Pacquiao. And neither Clottey or Margarito were fighting well at the time that they were put in with Pacquiao.

In an article by Dan Rafael of ESPN, Arum had this to say about why he’s not interested in having Pacquiao fight Marquez: “The problem with Marquez is the number he wants is so damn high, and he hasn’t moved off it, and that’s preventing the Marquez fight. We know what he got when he fought [Floyd] Mayweather and we feel that asking for double what he got for the Mayweather fight after he lost to Mayweather is a little bit much.”

Marquez is probably too dangerous for Pacquiao to fight, because he almost beat him twice before in their two fights. I had Marquez winning both of the fights. It may not matter what Marquez wants. He’s not likely going to get Pacquiao no matter what the way I see it. Marquez is better off saving his breath and focusing on other fights, because if Arum wanted Marquez as an opponent for Pacquiao, he would have come looking for him a long time ago.

Arum wants Mosley and doesn’t seem to mind that Shane is looking about as shot as you can look without being retired. Arum said “He’s [Mosley] the guy everybody knows, the pay-per-view guys, the casinos, the foreign television. Sugar Shane resonates. The downside is he has two bad performances, but he’s still Sugar Shane. With Shane, there’s room to make an adjustment, a little tweak here or there, and I’m sure we could get it done.”

Arum may be able to make some tweaks to get a contract signed, but the fight itself is going to be nothing short of awful for fans to watch. If Arum is okay with setting up a mismatch on PPV, then I feel sorry for all the fans that will be paying to watch this. Coming from my early years in the service industry, I learned a long time ago that you never want to upset your loyal customers with bad service and/or food. I don’t see this fight as being good for fans, especially when they’re being asked to pay a lot of money to see it. If the gold standard for an exciting fan-friendly fight is Amir Khan vs. Marcos Maidana, then I see Mosley-Pacquiao as the copper beneath fake gold. I see fans as feeling sick and turning green when they see how much of a mismatch this fight is going to be. But, hey, if Arum is okay with a mismatch, then what can you say. Personally, I don’t believe in upsetting and/or turning away loyal customers with a bad product and I see Pacquiao vs. Mosley as the worst fight you could put before fans right now.