Pacquiao-Marquez has a link to De La Hoya

The next stop on the professional boxing merry-go-round will be Saturday night in Las Vegas. As the world of boxing turns, only names and faces change.

This time, it will be Manny Pacquiao against Juan Manuel Marquez.

Seven weeks later, it will be Oscar De La Hoya against Stevie Forbes.

Each is promoted as if it has a chance to be the next Ali-Foreman. Neither, of course, will be.

We are told that Pacquiao is in the best shape of his life, that he stayed to train in Los Angeles for the full eight weeks, rather than traveling back and forth from his native Philippines. We are told that he trains by fighting 20 consecutive rounds with no break, that he runs the hills at Griffith Park, straight up for 55 minutes.

We are told that Marquez deserved the majority draw decision he got in their first fight in 2004 because he won the last 11 rounds, after getting knocked down three times in the first. We are told that, when the final bell rings Saturday night, there will be “a 100 million Mexicans, on their feet, applauding.”

We are told that the winner will be the super-featherweight champion for the WBC (World Boxing Council) and Ring Magazine. Like the rest of captivity, when it comes to boxing’s collection of sanctioning bodies, we don’t care.

What we do care about is where this all leads. It was a great marketing slogan for the WNBA a few years ago, but “We Got Next” is the essence of what drives boxing. That’s why, if you look closely during boxing telecasts, you will see promoters such as Bob Arum of Top Rank and Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy, sitting ringside with their fingers crossed.

A win by Pacquiao on Saturday night takes Arum one step closer to something special for his fighter. Same thing for Schaefer with a win by De La Hoya on May 3 at the Home Depot Center. Those would represent first jumps through a series of hoops that can get boxing to one of its real paydays, one actually noticed by the general public.

These are tournament playoffs, and the marquee final is Pacquiao-De La Hoya.

The idea was first floated by boxing broadcaster Larry Merchant, who now calls the match “somewhere between a possibility and a probability.”

Neither Arum nor Schaefer will deny that. Frankly, both would be delighted. They’d line their pockets and their sport would make the 11 o’clock news again.

Both know that hurdles remain.

Assuming a victory by Pacquiao, not an easy assumption, next up would be David Diaz in June. Diaz, a former Olympian, is on the Saturday night card at Mandalay Bay, fighting a 10-rounder against Ramon Montano, one of Pacquiao’s sparring partners.

After that, nothing is clear. Maybe a match against Ricky Hatton. Maybe no third match while awaiting De La Hoya.

For De La Hoya, the path is clearer but probably harder.Assuming he beats Forbes, next up, probably in September, is a rematch of his huge fight and close loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. Talk about lining pockets. Their first fight set pay-per-view records at about 2.3 million buys, numbers once thought achievable only by heavyweights.

Schaefer says that De La Hoya, now 34 and a partner with him in Golden Boy, has said he wants three more fights and then he is done.

“We agree, this is the last chapter,” Schaefer says. “If he beats Forbes and then has another close loss to Mayweather, maybe he’d go on. I’m not sure. Frankly, I think that would be the end.”

Arum says that Pacquiao-De La Hoya would have been a tough match to call “three or four years ago,” but now sees Pacquiao “out-speeding” the older, bigger De La Hoya.

Arum’s already working his promotion angles.

This has not been a bantered-about fight previously because De La Hoya’s era of stardom came before Pacquiao’s. Also, Pacquiao, 29, is a much smaller man, fighting Saturday at 130 and fighting as recently as 1999 at 113. De LaHoya will fight Forbes at a contractual 149, with a pound plus or minus allowed at weigh-in, and seems most comfortable at 154.

Since De La Hoya, who has usually handled smaller fighters easily, is not likely to come down much below 147, Pacquiao might fight with a weight discrepancy of about eight pounds.

That doesn’t always signify certain defeat.

In the 1930s and early 40s, Henry Armstrong held titles at 126, 135 and 147 pounds. On March 1, 1940, at Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles, he tried for the fourth title, fighting Ceferino Garcia at 160 and getting a draw.

Even back then, they had rules about large weight differences, but Armstrong got around it at the weigh-in by gluing several lead fishing weights to his groin and gluing more hair around the weights to conceal them.

A Pacquiao-De La Hoya fight is still at least four or five lead-up victories away from taking place. But that’s one of the attractions of the sport. Each fight leads to the next one. The hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone.

Every once in awhile, the stars align and sports fans get a Pacquiao-De La Hoya.

As Merchant says, “That’s one that would get lots of people’s attention.”

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.