By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says he’s decided where he wants his #1 fighter Manny Pacquiao to fight next. Arum says Pacquiao’s next fight will be in Macau, China in October rather than September. Arum isn’t saying who Pacquiao’s opponent will be but it’s one of the following fighters: Juan Manuel Marquez, Tim Bradley, Brandon Rios or Mike Alvarado.
In other words, it’ll be one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters that Pacquiao will be fighting. That’s no surprise because that’s who Arum has mostly been matching Pacquiao up against lately.
Arum said to the Manila Standard “[I’m] negotiating with everybody [Rios, Alvarado, Bradley & Marquez]. Macau is going to do the fight…Looking for the first or second week of October.”
Marquez is the guy that Arum wants most of all, but he reportedly is looking to get a 50-50 deal that would potentially give him a payday of $20 million and that will likely cause Arum to go in another direction by matching Pacquiao against one of the other Top Rank stable fighters that are willing to take a much smaller cut than Marquez.
What this means for Pacquiao and Arum is that his next fight won’t likely do nearly as well as his two recent fights against Marquez, both of which did more than 1 million pay per view buys. Pacquaio vs. Rios, Alvarado or Bradley are fights that’ll be lucky if they draw even 800,000. I guess it doesn’t matter if Pacquiao is able to have a huge percentage cut in his favor compared to his opponent.
That’ll ensure that he makes his usual $20 million+ guaranteed. In his last fight against Marquez, Pacquiao made a guaranteed $23 million. A fifth fight would likely result in both Pacquiao and Marquez both getting $20 million each if the fight were to be a 50-50 fight because the interest would be extremely high by the boxing public in that fight.
However, it doesn’t look like Arum is going to give Marquez the money that he wants for the fight, so it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. If the same 76-24 purse split were in effect for their 5th fight, then Marquez would make $10 million for the fight, while Pacquiao would make $30 million if we’re talking about a total purse of $40 million to be split up. Last time, Marquez got a guaranteed $6 million to Pacquiao’s $23 million of a total purse of $29 million. $20 million each should be enough for both fighters if it were a 50-50 deal, but that probably won’t happen.
Pacquiao can make a little bit more than that fighting Bradley, Alvarado or Rios. If Pacquiao gets knocked out again, I imagine Arum will be willing to give Marquez his 50-50 deal at that point because he’s probably not going to want to put him in with one of his other Top Rank stable fighters and risk having Pacquiao get knocked out for the third straight time and losing the chance of a making the 5th fight with Marquez and Pacquiao.
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