By Dan Ambrose: The contract between WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez and Golden Boy Promotions is reportedly expiring today, and unless Golden Boy can resign Marquez, which doesn’t seem likely, Marquez will move on towards a November fight with Manny Pacquiao. However, before that fight can happen, Marquez will almost surely sign with Top Rank, the same promoters as Pacquiao, and we’ll be looking at an in house fight between Marquez and Pacquiao.
The decision for the Marquez-Pacquiao III bout ultimately resides with Pacquiao. If he doesn’t want the fight, then Marquez will have to settle for fights against Arum’s other stars like perhaps Juan Manuel Lopez and maybe a future fight with WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley if he gets by Amir Khan in July.
In an article by Michael Marley at examiner.com, Arum said “I will take it up with Pacquiao [about whether he’s interested in fighting Marquez a third time or not]. I wouldn’t do anything along those lines without speaking to Manny first. I would want to hear what Manny has to say, what he thinks about it.”
It wouldn’t be surprising if Pacquiao wasn’t interested in fighting Marquez a third time because Pacquiao had huge problems in his two prior fights with Marquez in 2004 and 2008. The first fight was a 12 round draw and the second one saw Pacquiao win a controversial 12 round split decision. Pacquiao lost most of the rounds in both fights but made up for it by scoring knockdowns. Marquez seems to have Pacquiao’s number with his counter punching ability. However, Marquez, like Shane Mosley, may be old enough now for Pacquiao to conclusively beat him.
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