For Pacquiao, it’s either Cotto or Margarito

By Boxing News - 07/19/2010 - Comments

By Chris Williams: If your a fan of competitive fights, then you can pretty much forget about seeing any interesting match-ups involving WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao.

Unless a fight can be put together between Pacquiao and unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. next year in May, as Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum says going to try and do, then boxing fans will likely have to be content with seeing Pacquiao fight Top Rank fighters one after another starting with probably Margarito next in November.

This isn’t what boxing fans wanted to see from Pacquiao, but it’s what they’re going to get. Pacquiao’s diehard loyal fans aren’t about to complain, though, because many of them don’t appear to care who he fights. Just as long as Pacquiao is fighting, they’re happy.

But it’s disappointing that Pacquiao really doesn’t have a lot of options available for fights. Oh, sure, Pacquiao has tons of interesting opponents out there that he could fight. However, his promoter Bob Arum seems more interesting in matching him against his own fighters from his Top Rank stable, and unfortunately for Arum, his stable doesn’t have many fighters around Pacquiao’s weight class other than Margarito, Cotto, Joshua Clottey, Yuri Foreman, Vanes Martirosyan, and Matt Korobov. Out of that punch, only three of them are worth putting in with Pacquiuao.

But none of them can compare to the other more interesting fighters out there like Timothy Bradley, Paul Williams, Sergio Martinez, Marcos Maidana, Devon Alexander, Alfredo Angulo, Amir Khan and Andre Berto.

Those are the fighters that Pacquiao should be fighting, but there’s little chance of that happening. Pacquiao, because of Arum’s tendency to keep his fights in house, has really only two or three options available to him in the Top Rank stable. Once fights Cotto, and destroys him, there will only be Margarito and maybe Julio Cesar Chavez left in the stable for Pacquiao to fight, unless Arum wants to match Pacquiao up against his lesser stars like Martirosyan, Foreman and Korobov.

It would help make bigger stars of them, but it would hurt Pacquiao because he wouldn’t be matched against the fighters that boxing fans want to see. So you see, unless Arum can somehow put together a fight against Mayweather, Pacquiao has very options ahead of him. Hopefully, Pacquiao’s loyal fans can complain enough so that it gets Pacquiao’s attention and maybe he’ll speak up and make Arum match him against someone outside of his Top Rank stable. I kind of doubt he’ll do that.

Pacquiao will probably keep fighting whoever Arum puts in front of him.



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