EDITORIAL - The Pacquiao-Marquez squeeze

The fourth fight between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez on December 8 (December 9 in the Philippines) will prove nothing despite claims to the contrary by its promoters. All that the fight will do is further enrich both fighters and those closely associated with the match.

No title is on the line in the match, which means no official bragging rights can be derived by the winner. As to personal pride, or ego if you will, it is doubtful if anything of it still remains after three evenly-fought matches.

Not even a knockout win by either fighter can make one or the other emerge convincingly as the better fighter as a fourth fight will never be able to put to rest something that has eluded an answer three times around.

In this kind of sport, a fighter does not need four fights to prove dominance over the same opponent. It’s either that fighter has the other’s number or he doesn’t. To belabor that point is just being contentious and argumentative, or simply being opportunistic.

To be sure, the fight will still attract the fans. But this is not due to some consuming need to put the matter to rest. Whatever remains to be squeezed out of a fourth Pacquiao-Marquez fight lies in the fact that no other exciting match remains out there at the moment.

Adding to the difficulty in squeezing relevance out of this fight is the fact that what lustre Pacquiao can salvage out of a victory here, by whatever manner, will always come with a footnote that is spelled Timothy Bradley.

That fight may have been scandalously stolen from Pacquiao. But that is not what the footnote is about. The footnote will always be about Pacquiao getting dethroned because he failed to put Bradley out as expected.

Therefore, even assuming Pacquiao blasts the daylights out of Marquez, this time knocking the Mexican out cold even in the first round, it will still be less than spectacular considering what people already know about both boxers from three previous fights.

So where do we go from here? Will we accommodate Pacquiao even further by swallowing a fifth fight? On the other hand, all things being equal, what if it is Marquez who will win by a knockout? Are Filipinos ready for that? Or do we also cry for a Fight No. 5?