By Matt Stein: It was reported earlier today that Manny Pacquiao needed to be hospitalized for foot pain in an article at Abs-cbnnews. There was also talk of the pain possibly caused by arthritis of the foot. Pacquiao had blood taken and an MRI to try and determine the cause of the foot pain. But if it does turn out to be arthritis, this could be a sign that the 31-year-old Pacquiao is getting older and may need to slow things down or maybe even retire at some point.

When a person gets in their 30s and 40s, they often start to get nagging injuries. If this is arthritis, then Pacquiao is going to have to slow down some of his movements around the ring to accommodate his aging body. Pacquiao could get surgery to have the joint replaced with plastic but I don’t know that they do this with your foot. I know they do that with knees, shoulders and hips. I’ve never heard of a foot socket replacement. But when you get joints replaced, you can’t do a lot of the same movements with as much energy as before.

Getting old is hard for fighters, but usually they don’t get arthritis until much later on in their lives. It could be all the shifting around that Pacquiao does when he’s changing angles is wearing out foot joints. I know it much put a lot of stress on his feet the way he’s hopping around when changing angles. At 31, it’s hopeful that Pacquiao can continue to fight at a high level for another two or three years, but you never know.

Sometimes people age all of a sudden and start to lose it. I haven’t known anyone with arthritis, but I’ve had some pets that developed the problems in their knees and it would cause them to hobble around. They couldn’t move like they used to. This would be bad if Pacquiao is affected for his next fight against Antonio Margarito. Pacquiao needs two good working feet to beat a guy like Margarito, because unless Pacquiao can move around a lot in changing angles, he could become very average and beatable.