By Chris Williams: I contacted my cable company earlier today to find out how much it would cost purchase the Miguel Cotto vs. Manny Pacquiao bout on November 14th, and to my surprise they told me I would have to pay an incredible $54.95 to see the fight. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s way too much to see this fight. Indeed, I think it’s about $25 too much for this fight with it’s crappy undercard.

I don’t mind paying to see a pay-per-view bout, but I like to get what I pay for, and I don’t think I’m getting my monies worth in viewing the Cotto-Pacquiao fight along with it’s undercard. I think the Cotto vs. Pacquiao alone is worth about $18, and when you throw in the garbage undercard, that puts it to around $20. The undercard is worth $2 in my view because I could care less about seeing Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. face another B level fighter.

I’ve seen a lot of Chavez’s fights and I don’t understand why he’s still fighting B level fighters after 40 fights. Whatever the reason is, I certainly don’t want to help fund him fighting those types of fighters. Put Chavez Jr. in with Sergio Martinez or Paul Williams and you might get another $5 out of me just for the sheer enjoyment to see Chavez getting riddled to pieces.

But I don’t want to see him fighting some nobody from the 2nd tier. I’ve seen enough of his fights against those types of opponents to last me a life time. And I also care less about seeing Yuri Foreman fight Daniel Santos. I’ve seen Foreman and he runs a little too much for my tastes. For me, they would actually have to take money off the price of a pay-per-view bout for me to have to deal with the frustration of watching him fight. I don’t even want to watch him fight on ESPN, much less pay-per-view.

I don’t mind watching Alfonso Gomez fight Jesus Soto Karass, but I don’t want to pay to watch them. They’re both good, but I don’t see either as future champions in the welterweight division, even though Karass is ranked highly in the IBF and WBC. I see him as a fringe career contender. He’d be good to watch on ESPN, but I can’t see paying to watch him fight.

As for the Cotto-Pacquiao fight, I see it as an $18 fight. The reason is Cotto doesn’t appear to be the same fighter he was since being stopped last year by Antonio Margarito. Cotto took a beating in that fight and has had only a couple of fights since that time. Cotto didn’t exactly sparkle against Joshua Clottey in his last fight in June, and it looked like Cotto was getting ready to quit again at one point in the fight. He didn’t, but he sure looked like he was going to do it at one point late in the fight when he started taking punishment from Clottey.

Cotto may not be the same fighter and may never be. I can’t see paying a bunch of money for a fighter that isn’t what he used to be. Substitute Shane Mosley for Cotto and I could see paying another $5 for the fight, which would turn it into a $23 fight. No more than that though.

Pacquiao is another piece of work. He looked like he lost to Juan Manuel Marquez last year. Pacquiao got the win, but I think he should have lost. Pacquiao hasn’t faced anyone really talented since then. Yeah, he beat Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya, but I don’t rate either of those fighters. Put Pacquiao in with Timothy Bradley or like I said, Shane Mosley, then I would get excited about this fight.