Brandon Rios, Mike Alvarado and Timothy Bradley have frequently been mentioned as possible end-of-year opponents for Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez. While it’s widely assumed by people in the know that Pacquiao and Marquez will actually end up fighting one another, in order for both camps to retain leverage in negotiations, they have to maintain the facade that there are plenty of potential foes for their guys to choose from.In their first few fights together, Pacquiao and Marquez had relatively little trouble negotiating terms. The latter had no grounds to demand anything; the former was the world’s top pound-for-pounder. That made discussions fairly simple. What Paquiao said would happen is what ended up happening. Whatever sum of money he wanted, he got. Marquez was just happy to get the opportunity for a big pay day and a chance to establish his all-time greatness.
That all changed with Pacquiao’s back-to-back losses – particularly the second one. Suddenly, he no longer held all the cards. Really, Marquez had tons more leverage because, if he wanted to, he could just retire without giving his Filipino counterpart an opportunity to avenge his most recent defeat. And that’s why negotiations have moved along so slowly over the past few months: Marquez wants more and, understandably, Pacquiao doesn’t want to part ways with too much.
Inevitably, though, a deal will get worked out. If for no other reason than simply because, regardless of how much less money anyone gets, it’ll still be more than what they can earn otherwise.
During a recent interview with The Boxing Voice, Rios indicated that his attention was fully on a rematch with Mike Alvarado.
“We got to do it again, do the tiebreaker. Honestly I’m a warrior, why not it be next. If Cameron wants it again, I would love to do it next. If Cameron (Dunkin) and the promotion want it next, shit I’d love to do it again next. I told Cameron Dunkin I want to fight him again immediately. He said I’m going to talk to Bob Arum and make it happen,” he said
“He wants to take me to Denver, don’t matter where, as long as I get the fight. He said he went to my backyard which isn’t true because he was training in California. We went to Vegas, which is none of our backyards, we can go to his backyard, f**k it.”
Rios admitted that he would fight Marquez if that was the fight set up for him, but his preference is clear: he wants redemption for what happened two weeks ago. That leaves just Bradley for Pacquiao and Marquez to fight over. And the reality of the situation is: Bradley generates far less in PPV sales than Pacquiao and Marquez do.
In the end, money will win out, as it always does.
Source: Boxing Voice
No comments:
Post a Comment