By Chris Williams: To no one’s great surprise, Manny Pacquiao wants to fight the winner of this Saturday’s clash between the aging Mexican star 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) and Mike Alvarado (34-2, 23 KO’s) at the Forum, in Inglewood, California, USA. Arum has confirmed with Pacquiao that he wants the winner of this fight, so this is what boxing fans will likely be seeing in September for Pacquiao’s next fight.
Pacquiao can’t fight the winner of the June 7th fight between Sergio Martinez and Miguel Cotto unless he waits until later in the year, because the winner of that fight will likely be nicked up and unable to fight in September.
Pacquiao wants to avenge his loss to Marquez from 2012, and so he’s obviously the guy that he’d like to fight next. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach also badly wants Marquez next for Pacquiao, because he’s not happy the way the Mexican warrior knocked Pacquiao out cold in 2012 and he wants a chance to show that Pacquiao is the better fighter. It’s one of those things where if Pacquiao fights Marquez enough times late in his career, he’ll eventually prove that he’s the better fighter than him, but it won’t mean much due to Marquez’s advanced age.
Marquez will be turning 41 in August, and he looked all of 40 in his recent loss to Tim Bradley last October. There’s not a lot of gain for Pacquiao to beat Marquez at this point in his career, because Marquez has arguably proven that he’s the better fighter of the two in their four previous fights. While Marquez has lost 2 out of the 4 fights, many boxing fans feel that Marquez deserved to get the win in all 4 of them.
“The first thing I did was talk to Manny and he is up to fight the winner,” Arum said. “I haven’t, and there is nothing contractual with the two fighters that are fighting Saturday, but they know I will offer the winner a fight with Manny and it’s up to the winner to accept or reject it. So that’s where we stand and if I hear that the winner will be interested in fighting Manny in the fall, and Manny has agreed to fight the winner, so I would say that once we got the terms straightened out it would be a done deal.”
Marquez is one of the few guys that can guarantee a lot of pay-per-view buys for Pacquiao, and that’s obviously one of the reasons why Arum is so eager to have him continue to fight Pacquiao over and over again. I just hope that we don’t see these two fighters out there using walkers years from now, still fighting it out with Marquez showing his dominance.
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