By Chris Williams: After only one day of sales the tickets for the November 12th bout between World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight champion and WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (53-5-1, 39 KO’s) are almost completely sold out. According to Kevin Iole on his twitter, there only 2000 tickets left after the first day for the fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The sales tells you how much of a star the 37-year-old Marquez is, because Pacquiao’s fights usually don’t sell at such a rapid pace. However, Marquez is a lot better than the guys that have been fed to Pacquiao in the past three years. Although he’s nearing 40 like Pacquiao’s last opponent Shane Mosley, Marquez can still fight and is probably at around 75% of his prime.

Whether that’s good enough to beat Pacquiao it’s hard to say. Frankly, I think the weight will end up beating Marquez more than anything. Pacquiao and his team weren’t exactly generous when it came to giving the smaller 135 pound Marquez much of a catch weight to operate at. The fight will take place at 144, just three pounds under the upper limit of the welterweight division.

That means that Marquez is likely going to be fighting a much bigger Pacquiao, who is used to fighting at this weight. Marquez has only fought over 140 once in his career and looked slow, fat and weak in his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr in 2009. Marquez turns 38 next month. He recently beat little known southpaw Likar Ramos by a 1st round knockout last weekend in something of a joke of a fight. Ramos went down with a weak right to the head and stayed down. If that was supposed to get boxing fans interested in seeing Pacquiao-Marquez, I think it had the opposite affect.