By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao has all of a sudden started mentioning Floyd Mayweather’s name a lot in the media now that Pacquiao has signed to fight Juan Manuel Marquez this December 8th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao has even said that he’d be willing to take a 45/55 deal with Mayweather to get the fight, although Pacquiao’s close adviser Michael Koncz is saying the deal is 55% of the purse to the winner and 45% to the loser. But the timing of Pacquiao mentioning wanting to fight Mayweather seems really odd, because the time to do that would have been before Pacquiao was signed to fight Marquez, not after.

It makes Pacquiao look like he’s just using Mayweather’s name to try and heighten interest in his fight with 39-year-old Marquez.

What was very peculiar the other day when Pacquiao was being interviewed by ESPN was the way that the conversation stayed on Pacquiao-Mayweather the majority of the time with only a small percentage being devoted to Pacquiao’s fourth fight with Marquez. Is Pacquiao looking to sell the Marquez fight by mentioning Mayweather’s name to help sell tickets and pick up pay per view buys?

Calling out Mayweather while fighting Marquez seems like a good way to sell tickets, but it is kind of telling that Mayweather’s name needs to be mentioned just so that boxing fans take interest in Pacquiao’s current fight. I blame that on Bob Arum. He could have found someone else for Pacquiao to fight besides bringing Marquez back out for yet another fight. There’s no suspense in seeing Pacquiao fight this guy again, because we’ve seen Marquez fight well enough to already have three wins against Pacquiao but still getting the wins. It’s kind of off putting to see Pacquiao fight a guy that a lot of fans felt was robbed in the past. Marquez is 39 now, so that even if Pacquiao does finally beat him without controversy this time, people are going to figure that Marquez was too old and not give Pacquiao the credit he wants.