By Salvador Rodriguez

Former four division world champion Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40KOs) is expecting a very tough and dangerous fight when he steps in the ring with Mike Alvarado (34-2, 23KOs) at a catch-weight of 143-pounds on May 17th at the Forum in Los Angeles, California.

Both fighters are coming back from defeats in October 2013. Marquez lost a twelve round split decision to WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao and Alvarado was stopped by Ruslan Provodnikov. The winner of this fight will receive the opportunity to get a direct shot at the April 12th winner between Manny Pacquiao and Bradley.

Marquez, 40-years-old, felt he overtrained for Bradley and plans to cut some things down for Alvarado. He trained for 100 days for Bradley, but wants to train for 60 days for Alvarado.

"Perhaps less sparring, and focus more on speed and power at this point in my career," Marquez said. "I'm the type of fighter who likes to prepare myself for three months or three and a half months, but in the last fight it didn't work for us in terms of what we wanted in speed and power, and that's why this time we are going to train less."

Alvarado might be coming off a TKO defeat, but Marquez is taking his worth very seriously.

"Alvarado is going to be dangerous during the entire duration of the fight. He lost to great fighters and he wants to return to a winning path, because another defeat will bring him closer to retirement. So of course he is going to press, then he is going to box, and he is going to want to counterpunch, but we are going to prepare ourselves for whatever he wants to do," Marquez said.