By Chris Williams: According to the Manila Bulletin, 33-year-old Manny Pacquiao is a huge 4-1 favorite to defeat 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez when they face each other for a fourth fight on December 8th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What’s especially peculiar about the betting odds is that Pacquiao appeared to lose in all three fights with Marquez, and yet he was given decision victories in two of the three. You would have to ignore those three fights to come up with making Pacquiao a 4-1 favorite unless you figured that Pacquiao would win just based on popularity rather than talent.

The Pacquiao-Marquez fight will likely sell out the MGM Grand arena with well over 18,000 seats sold.

It’s still unclear what the price of the Pacquiao vs. Marquez will be on pay per view, but it’s doubtful that it’ll be more than $49.99, because it’s a fight that’s already taken place on three other occasions. However, that’s still an awful lot of money for something that boxing fans have seen three times already and all you can hope for is that Top Rank promoter Bob Arum decides to package the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 fight with a good undercard for a change. Putting this fight with slop would be big disservice to the boxing fans because it’s already got one strike going against it because it’s a rerun of three previous fights.

It’s hard to see any real reason for Pacquiao and Marquez to fight for a fourth title other than Arum seeing it as a way of making money for all those involved. There’s really nothing to prove because both guys have already fought each other in their primes with Marquez appearing to win and get jobbed each time. Both are now showing signs of going down hill and the winner of the fight will be considered the slightly less shot fighter of the two rather than some kind of great fighter.