By Ivan G. Goldman

You want to know how Juan Manuel Marquez-Manny Pacquiao battle Number Four will come out Saturday night? Simple. It will end in a controversy that can be settled only by a fifth fight next year at the same old MGM Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Except of course that won’t decide who bested the other either. But maybe Number Six or Seven or . . .

It’s all got something to do with the Einstein time-space continuum that I can’t explain because frankly I don’t understand it. But for the same reason that two parallel lines meet up eventually at Area 51 in Nevada, the series between these two fighters will never end. Resign yourself to it because the sooner we all face it, the sooner we can pick our way through the days ahead with the last shards of our patience and sanity. Expect fight fans to continue shouting their opinions at each other and analysts to continue parroting each others’ findings as everybody tries to figure out who really won.

In fact, I predict that a few billion years from now when we’ve fried the earth into an omelet, creatures from another galaxy will pick their way through its cooling embers and for a $600 million pay-per-view charge (worth about three hundred thousand bucks in today’s dollars) they’ll be able to settle back and watch Marquez and Pacquiao go mano a mano and toe-to-toe once again. Because this series is like a radioactive cockroach. Nothing can kill it.

The intergalactic visitors, from the comfort of their air-conditioned flying saucer, will watch the two fighters doing on-screen pre-fight publicity and saying that this time they’ll have to get a knockout so the judges will no longer be a factor. Freddie Roach and Nacho Beristain, kept alive in jars, will still compliment each other. The two fighters will thank their physical trainers for putting them through a regimen that’s kept their speed and strength intact for billions of years while just about everyone else is dead except for the two promoters, Bob Arum and Fernando Beltran, who, it turns out, were never human in the first place, which is why they were able to keep scheduling these damn fights.

Manny will once again give away turkeys and Thanksgiving pies on the wealthy West Side of Los Angeles where nobody needs them. On another day designed to attract TV cameras, Pac-man will introduce his special guest, a Congresswoman from Planet Zedo, where they will smile for interplanetary media at the Wild Card Gym and smile and answer no questions about the next fiscal cliff.

The previous billion fights between the two pugilists will have multiple replay dates on HBO, and the series will also be available to more than a trillion homes scattered across six galaxies through HBO On Demand and HBO GO. The network will accept payment in whatever currency you’ve got. And no matter where the customers reside, the local cable bill will still be impossible to figure out.

But no, you won’t be able to use the hashtag #PacMarquez to join the conversation on Twitter because in the future earthlings will have figured out that Twitter and Facebook are both stupid. They’ll still waste their time, but it will be on other crap. And yes, Pacquiao workouts will be streamed live to a Times Square crowd that will be milling around below in radioactive suits. Pickpockets will be prosecuted.

And one more thing. Floyd Mayweather will still pop up once in a while to say that maybe he’ll fight Pacquiao next year.

Ivan G. Goldman’s critically acclaimed novel The Barfighter is set in the world of boxing. Information HERE

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