Who cares about Pacquiao-Marquez 5?
After Juan Manuel Marquez made a grandmaster exhibition of durability and ring craft at the Forum in Inglewood, California, over the weekend, it’s not surprising that the clamor was not for a fifth clash between the 40-year-old Mexican legend and Filipino superhero Manny Pacquiao.
Everybody was crying for the grand but extremely elusive sure masterpiece between Pacquiao and unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Everybody, except Mr. Arum?
“It’s up to the old bugger to try and work this one out in all honesty and candor,” said Filipino boxing expert Hermie Rivera from his Newark nest in California.
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Why? “Arum owes it to the sport and the fight public,” Rivera said.
Rivera went on to explain that, instead of that fifth meeting in the Pacquiao-Marquez rivalry that has been painfully beaten to a pulp, the cry and clamor is for the dream Mayweather-Pacquiao bout of bouts.
Starting with Muhammad Ali, to Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Shane Mosley, etc., Rivera said everybody wanted the dream match.
Needless to say, these living legends feel as one that any bout other than Pacquiao-Mayweather would be an injustice to the public and the sport itself.
Of course, other than Arum, Mayweather, who has never run out of alibis in avoiding Pacquiao, has remained the bigger stumbling block.
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Meanwhile, Arum has booked a fight date for Pacquiao in Macau next November. They say the fifth bout between Pacquiao and Marquez was not a done deal yet.
“Sino nilokoko nila (Who are they fooling)?” swore veteran journalist Bert de Guzman of Balita.
De Guzman, a fighting Bulakeño poet, has challenged boxing devotees to a boycott, a sort of sit-down strike.
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Actually, before De Guzman, Reni M. Valenzuela of philboxing.com had noted that the diminished gates in both the previous fights of Mayweather and Pacquiao were not only manifestations of displeasure.
He said they were rumblings of a boycott and revolt.
Wrote Valenzuela: “People Power in boxing is victorious. Truth and the people have prevailed. The sport has just been served. Everybody wins except the paranoid or ‘apostates’ who may even go worse for fear of losing their hold on galleries in their self-made elite kingdoms.”
Yes, oh yes. But who will prevent a sixth, seventh or even eighth Pacquiao-Marquez fight after they’re done wih the fifth one?
In all honesty, Bob Arum won’t.
