By Chris Williams: It’s great to be one of the Top Rank stable fighters. Unbeaten welterweight contender Mike Jones (25-0, 19 KO’s) will be either fighting on the November 12th undercard of Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez or the December 3rd card with Antonio Margarito vs. Miguel Cotto. Either way, the 28-year-old Jones wins.

But better than that, Jones only has to bide his time and not get beaten by the 2nd and 3rd tier opposition he’s being put in with and he’s likely going to get a shot against Manny Pacquiao even without any real wins of substance on his resume. Now that’s obviously the best part of all. Forget about Jones’ ranking of No.1 by the WBO, he hasn’t beaten anyone other than fringe contender Jesus Soto Karass to get that kind of high ranking.

It’s got to be excellent to be Jones right now because he can continue facing the likes of Raul Munoz (22-13), who Jones recently beat in his last fight, and he’ll still get the Pacquiao fight in the near future. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has pretty well exhausted all of his Top Rank stable fighters by putting them in with Pacquiao and having him beat all of them and now it’s getting down to the bottom with only Mike Jones, Brandon Rios and Kermit Cintron left. Cintron just got badly beaten by Carlos Molina, so it looks like he’s out of the running at least for now. You can never rule out an opponent for Pacquiao just because they were recently beaten, as we’ve seen with Margarito, Cotto, Shane Mosley, Ricky Hatton and Joshua Clottey. Pacquiao still fought all of them despite them coming off of recent losses. Rios is probably about a year away from his shots at Manny, and that leaves Jones. The strange part about it all is that Sergio Martinez, a 5’10” fighter, is considered too big for Pacquiao, yet the 5’11” Margarito and the 6’0″ Jones aren’t considered too big. Is that weird or what?

Don’t expect Jones to be matched against a real threat in his next fight on either the Pacquiao vs. Marquez or Cotto vs. Margarito undercard. We’ve already seen Jones struggle against B level Karass, so Jones isn’t likely going to be put in with anyone with anyone with even a hint of talent. He’s probably going to be put in with someone that can make Jones look really good, someone that will fall over without making Jones look awful. We can’t have Jones getting exposed before the public can get excited about him facing Pacquiao. He can then get exposed in that fight and then it starts again. Built him up, put him with Pacquiao, pick him up afterwards, dust him off and build him up again with more soft opposition. I