Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez V Talks Addressed By Bob Arum

Top Rank CEO Bob Arum addressed the buzz about Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez V.

In Pacquiao’s glorified career, Marquez was one of the few fighters who managed to shock the world by knocking him out cold in their fourth epic meeting. Many are convinced and even Pacquiao himself believes that Marquez was the only boxer who “could figure him out.” And now, after almost 8 years since one of the biggest upsets in the history of boxing, Arum revealed that there were talks about a possible fifth bout between the two legendary boxers.

Arum recently spoke to World Boxing News to address the truth about two previous articles where Marquez apparently stated the paycheck for a fifth fight with Pacquiao could have been “$150 million dollars.”

According to Arum, the said amount was probably just a slip of the tongue in the part of Marquez. However, the Top Rank boss confirmed that offers were made for the said fight but the amount involved was far from what Marquez has mentioned.

“Listen, I discussed it with my people in the company. You know, what Marquez is talking about. Because I know that we offered him either six or seven million dollars (for the fifth fight), which was far more than he ever made for the fourth fight. We offered him six million. Then I know we went up to eight or nine (million), something like that.” Arum explained.

The 88-year-old promoter also recalled that “the offer was made within a year of Marquez scoring the knockout.” Based on Arum’s logical assumption, Marquez could have been talking about “pesos” and not dollars.

“One of those guys who had no credibility and we never paid attention to might have offered Marquez a $100 to $150 million, but we obviously don’t know that for a fact. That’s a separate theory. I think the better theory is that Marquez was talking about the pesos. That’s because when you take 100 million pesos or 150 million and translate it to us dollars, that would be accurate,” Arum pointed out.

Despite the possible confusion in terms of paycheck, Arum revealed that there were some promoters at the time who were really considering making the Pacquiao vs. Marquez V happen somewhere in the middle east.

“Now, Todd (DuBoef, Top Rank Vice President at that time) said Eddie Hearn – which at that point he remembers from Fernando Beltran, that there were a lot of guys running around the world saying that they had an offer from the Middle-East. Whether it was Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Calcutta (now Kolkata). Those Middle Eastern countries who were willing to put up huge amounts of money for big fights,” Arum revealed.