“The old Pacquiao” could beat Margarito, Arum says

By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum wasn’t impressed with what he saw of the Filipino fighter in his visit to Pacquiao’s training camp in the Philippines. Arum saw what the reporters have been observing, seeing an unimpressive Pacquiao struggling during training. Arum is now worried whether Pacquiao can get by his next opponent Antonio Margarito on November 13th at the Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. Speaking to Philboxing.com, Arum said “The old Pacquiao would have no problem beating Antonio Margarito. He still has time to bring the old Pacquiao back when he is in Los Angeles.” I don’t think the old Pacquiao exists anymore. He’s getting older, has gained weight and become a politician.

I don’t know about that. Pacquiao has put on extra weight so that he can compete against the bigger 5’11″ Margarito for the vacant World Boxing Council junior middleweight title, and that extra weight appears to be slowing Pacquiao down. He already looked slow in his last fight against Joshua Clottey, and that was 147. The problem is Pacquiao isn’t fast like he used to be now that he’s nearing 150. His trainer Freddie Roach and his conditioning expert Alex Ariza are probably going to work on trimming Pacquiao down to a weight where he can have a tad bit more speed, but I think for Pacquiao to really get his speed back, he’s going to need to drop down to 140 and below.

He’s just not fast at anything over 140 and we’re now starting to see the same problems that effected Juan Manuel Marquez when he bulked up to 143 for his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year. Pacquiao has already started to look slow, but he’s gotten away with it because he was matched against Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey, both of which are badly flawed and don’t appear to be the same fighters they once were.

Cotto ran from Pacquiao the entire fight rather than taking the fight to him. Margarito will be going right at Pacquiao and taking advantage of his speed abandoning him. Arum says “He better step up his training because this guy [speaking about Margarito] poses very, very unique dangers. [Margarito] is in the best shape I have ever seen. He would be a big danger for any welterweight in the world.”

Yes, Margarito is in the best shape he’s been in years, and that’s bad news for Pacquiao if he can’t taking him out in the first couple of rounds like he did against Ricky Hatton. If Margarito is allowed to fight round after round, he’s going to beat Pacquiao up by landing a lot of punches. Pacquiao won’t be able to compete with Margarito punch for punch.

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