By Gav Duthie: After Juan Manuel Marwuez beat Mike Alvarado almost 1 year ago in May of 2014, I discussed his legacy and whether he should continue fighting. As we all know his one burning desire remaining is to become the first five weight Mexican champion.
At present he his one of only three Mexican four weight champions (alongside Erik Morales, Jorge Arce) and possibly this is legacy enough. Having watched Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman 25-0 (21) on Saturday and followed the career of Kell Brook 33-0 (22) I think Marquez should retire rather than challenge these champions.
147 title options
Obviously having already fought Floyd Mayweather Jr, who holds the WBC, WBA Super welterweight titles and lost convincingly to him in their fight in 2009, this is not an option. The 41-year-old Marquez has also dismissed fighting Manny Pacquiao for a fifth time, so this rules out facing the winner of the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao super bout at the MGM Grand on May 2nd in Las Vegas, Nevada. This leaves WBA regular champion Keith Thurman and IBF champ Kell Brook. It’s not that I think these guys are better than Marquez, far from it but they are just so much bigger and stronger. Marquez has fought at 147 a few times but has only ever topped the scales at 144 lbs. His reach is smaller, he couldn’t hurt them and at 41 years old would struggle to fight at high intensity.
2011/12
The welterweight division is just too good just now he could have maybe won a title 4 or 5 years ago when we had champions like Andre Berto, Vyachslav Senchenko, Victor Ortiz or a 147lb rematch with Paulie Maliggnaggi but not now. These two (Thurman and Brook) are proper Welterweights. They didn’t start their careers at lightweight they are genuinely big guys with power. My advice would be to get that knee sorted, retire and enjoy.
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