By Jim Dower: If Manny Pacquiao can get by his next opponent Shane Mosley on May 7th, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum plans on matching his fighter Pacquiao against Juan Manuel Marquez (52-5-1, 38 KO’s) in his next fight if Floyd Mayweather Jr. isn’t available to fight Pacquiao. Arum realizes that Marquez, 37, is the best option available for Pacquiao if Mayweather isn’t available to fight.

Speaking with Scoop Malinowski at boxinginsider.com, Arum said “After each fight we take a good look to see if Mayweather’s going to be available. If he is, that’s the fight we want. If he isn’t, we go to the next option. So probably the guy who would be next would be Marquez probably. [Andre] Berto isn’t doing anything for his reputation fighting junior welterweights. I mean, he’s going to beat [Victor] Ortiz but so what? And there’s nobody around that’s interesting like Marquez.”

Berto, the WBC welterweight champion, decided to fight Ortiz in April rather than fight a top welterweight. It bugs Arum that Berto has been fighting light welterweights about half the time since he captured the WBC belt in 2008. Arum would have liked to have seen Berto take on his unbeaten welterweight contender Mike Jones rather than seeing Berto look for another smaller fighter to take on.

Marquez has been looking good as of late, defeating Michael Katsidis and Juan Diaz in his last two fights. Marquez looked bad in losing to Mayweather in a 12 round decision loss in September 2009, but the fight was fought at welterweight and Mayweather had a big size and speed advantage over Marquez. None the less, the fight did well on pay-per-view, bringing in 1.4 million buys. Arum perhaps realizes that Marquez would draw a lot of Mexican fans for the PPV fight with Pacquiao and it could end up eclipsing whatever numbers the Pacquiao vs. Mosley fight brings in on May 7th.