By Chris Williams: Miguel Cotto and Juan Manuel Marquez both are in a good position to get selected to face Manny Pacquiao in his next fight on either November 10th or December 1st, whichever date Bob Arum wants his Filipino star to fight again. Tim Bradley could be eliminated by virtue of the low pay per view buys from his win over Pacquiao last June.

The fight drew only 700,000 PPV buys, which was the lowest total since Pacquiao brought in only 660,000 buys in fighting one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters Joshua Clottey in 2010. I still remember how Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach was bragging about how Clottey would make for such an entertaining opponent for Pacquiao. It turned out to be like watching a sparring session in a gym.

In contrast to the terrible numbers that the Pacquiao-Bradley fight drew in, Pacquiao’s fight with Miguel Cotto in 2009 hauled in 1.2 million buys. And Pacquiao’s 3rd fight with Marquez last November brought in even better numbers with 1.4 million PPV buys. Obviously, a lot of the buys were coming from Marquez and Cotto fans.

The Clottey and Bradley fights showed pretty clearly that Pacquiao can’t bring in huge numbers all by himself like say Floyd Mayweather Jr can. Pacquiao needs a big star across from him to get into the 1 million buy category. This is why Cotto and Marquez are in a good position for one of them to get selected.

This is actually a smarter thing for Arum to do by picking either Marquez or Cotto to fight Pacquiao, because Bradley’s ability to move around the ring had Pacquiao looking old last June in his loss to Bradley. With two good legs in a rematch, Bradley would be a big problem for Pacquiao and at the very minimum, he’d make Pacquiao look bad even if he were to avenge his earlier defeat against him.