"I'm going to the Philippines on January 8, and I should be there on January 10. I'm going to shortly, thereafter, meet with Manny, and we're going to be offering Manny four potential opponents -- Cotto, Marquez, Bradley and Peterson," promoter Bob Arum would tell RingTV.com. It's a familiar tactic of opponent selection employed in previous Pacquiao fights. Remember back in November of 2010 when Shane Mosley informed his followers on Twitter that he had just met with Bob Arum and he was "90% sure" that he was next in line to face Pacquiao? In case you forgot, Mosley's revelation came just one week after Pacquiao dismantled Antonio Margarito. In the weeks that followed, other names would be mentioned as potential opponents, including Andre Berto, Juan Manuel Marquez, and even Zab Judah, but all the while, Shane Mosley maintained that it was he who was getting the assignment. Four names then, and four names now, but ultimately, according to Arum, it's Pacquiao's decision to make. Of course, if history repeats itself, the only choice that Pacquiao can make is the one that "economically" moves the needle, and that choice is the same one that Bob Arum has wanted ever since fans booed the decision that was read on November 12, 2011...a fourth fight with Juan Manuel Marquez.
Despite the fact that Manny Pacquiao will "make the call" when it comes to his next fight, it's no secret that Bob Arum is going to push for the fourth fight with Marquez. After all, financially, it's the biggest fight that can be made for Pacquiao. Although Top Rank Promotions has yet to release the official numbers from the third bout with Marquez, Arum tells us that it was Pacquiao's most succesful pay-per-view to date, with numbers somewhere around the 1.4 million range. If that's the case, it makes sense for Arum to push for the best financial fight for his fighter, as was the case in his decision to push for the Mosley fight. As Arum once explained to Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports, "The bottom line, it's all about the Benjamins," Arum said. "I input what I think it will do on pay-per-view, and that's largely based upon how I can sell it." It was that logic that essentially made names like Berto, Judah, and Marquez a non-factor at the time when Mosley insisted that he was indeed Pacquiao's next opponent an entire month before it was officially announced.
"Berto is a tough sell, because nobody knows him. I could pitch it as the unknown, the undefeated guy, but how much that moves the needle, I'm not sure. With Mosley, my gut feeling is that promoting that fight right, because of Mosley's name recognition, will move the needle a lot. That will be a pretty high number," Arum would explain a year ago as he justified why Mosley was the smart, and essentially the only choice to make out of the names that he would "present" to Pacquiao. "The casual sports fan just doesn't know Marquez, as witnessed by the attendance [of 4,920 at this fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena against Michael Katsidis] on Saturday. He's a wonderful fighter and a great young man, but the casual fan doesn't know Juan Manuel Marquez from Juan Manuel Lopez."
Fast forward to 2012. Clearly, Juan Manuel Marquez is no longer the unknown commodity that Arum once suggested that he was. In fact, his third bout with Pacquiao was the most-watched fight ever in Mexico, as 37.2 million Mexican boxing fans tuned in on Azteca 7, giving it a 31 in the ratings, the first boxing event to ever go over 30 ratings points. Let me just repeat that with some emphasis...PACQUIAO VS. MARQUEZ III WAS THE MOST-WATCHED FIGHT EVER IN MEXICO! CHA-CHING!$$! For a promoter who justified the deicision to fight Shane Mosley as being "all about the Benjamins", numbers like that make a fourth fight with Marquez a must. It's no coincidence that Marquez was on hand in New York to attend Cotto vs. Margarito II, and it's probably no coincidence that Bob Arum was recently "vacationing" in Mexico. As was the case with Mosley, the fight with Marquez is likely already 90% done. All of these other names being "considered" are simply filler, designed to either convince Marquez to come off of some of his demands, or to simply quiet the initial grumblings from fans and media when Arum first suggested the idea of a fourth fight. Just like Andre Berto, Lamont Peterson and Timothy Bradley are a "tough sell" for Arum, and while Cotto is certainly a possibility, there's no way that he does bigger numbers than Marquez. After a couple more weeks of Arum and Koncz floating the other three names around to their go-to journalists in the US and the Philippines, expect Pacquiao to officially "make the call" and pick Juan Manuel Marquez, once and for all.
Just a bit of trivia, has there ever been a 4-fight series where one fighter has never officially won any of the fights?
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