By Chris Williams: I keep hearing about how great Manny Pacquiao is and how horrible Antonio Margarito by Freddie Roach, and a lot of Pacquiao’s adoring fans. Well, if Pacquiao is so great and Margarito is so terrible, how come Pacquiao and his team are making this a catchweight fight for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title? You would think that if Margarito is really a horrible fighter, then it stands to reason that Pacquiao doesn’t need a catch weight to fight him. That just taints it for me. Why does Pacquiao need a handicap to fight Margarito?

Pacquiao already fought for a title at a catchweight last year when he defeated WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto at a catchweight. Cotto was against fighting for the catchweight if his title was going to be on the line. However, the WBO suddenly shot Pacquiao up to the number #1 contender position overnight, and thus giving Cotto no other choice but to fight with his title on the line for the fight otherwise he’d be stripped of the title and Pacquiao would still be allowed to fight for it. That did it for me. I was really turned off by that move, and don’t consider that a legitimate title win for Pacquiao, and I won’t recognize Pacquiao as being the WBC junior middleweight champion if he beats Margarito because of the catch weight, the fact that Pacquiao has never fought at junior middleweight and isn’t even ranked in the division, and Margarito has fought only once at this weight in the past six years.

This is like some kind off exhibition fight with a title on the line for two guys that shouldn’t be fighting for a title if boxing had their act together. I don’t mind Pacquiao fighting for the WBC title if he at least had beaten some top fighters in the junior middleweight division and worked his way up to the point where he was ranked in the top 10, but he’s not in this case. Margarito has only fought one guy at junior middleweight in the past six years and that was recently when he beat Roberto Garcia in May.