By Aaron Klein: I’ve long considered Manny Pacquiao (47-3, 35 KOs) to be the best pound for pound boxer on the planet, a fighter that few boxers even come close to being as good as. With that said, unfortunately I think he’s going to get to get his backside handed to him on December 6th by Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs). It isn’t that De La Hoya is still a top fighter at this point, because he’s clearly more B-class than A level at this point in his career, but his huge size advantage is going to make him much better than the shorter, lighter Pacquiao to have to deal with.

To be sure, Pacquiao looked nearly invincible in beating the limited lightweight champion David Diaz in a 9th round TKO in June to win the World Boxing Council lightweight champion. This was a good win for Pacquiao, I must admit, but it was still only a small lightweight that he defeated, not the 154 pound De La Hoya. Perhaps a true indication of how good Pacquiao really is, and how well he’ll do against De La Hoya, was Pacquiao’s 12-round split decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez in March. Aside from the fact that Pacquiao appeared to lose the fight, he looked helpless every time Marquez chose to use his jab on him.

The helplessness on the part of Pacquiao, this inability to deal with Marquez’s jab with any degree of success, made it clear to me that Pacquiao will be in a lot of trouble when he faces the longer-armed De La Hoya. Six inches of reach will separate Pacquiao and De La Hoya, and it seems doubtful that Pacquiao will be able to get beyond De La Hoya’s jab with any degree of success. Obviously, then, Pacquiao is going to have to come up with another game plan if he hopes to prevent from being knocked out.

De La Hoya has learned his lesson from his defeat to the shorter Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May 2007, a fight in which De La Hoya was doing well in while jabbing frequently in the first half of the fight. He realizes his mistake now, and will no doubt he using his jab frequently on the diminutive Pacquiao. This not only means that De La Hoya will beat Pacquiao, but he will likely beat him by a knockout when Pacquiao, desperately behind in the fight, tries hard to make a fight of it by rushing inside.

I think it’s this sense of desperation on Pacquiao’s part will cause him to get hit with something big, probably one of Oscar’s powerful left hooks to the head, sending Pacquiao down. Usually a fighter, no matter how badly over-matched they are, they have alternative plans they can fall back on when things are going wrong for them.

In Pacquiao’s case, he has next to none. He can’t fight from the outside because he’s too small, he can’t fight on the inside because Oscar will probably clinch him, and he will have a lot of problems getting past De La Hoya’s jab without getting hit a massive amount of times. This is why I see Pacquiao getting beaten down and stopped by the 7th or 8th rounds.

He’s a better fighter than De La Hoya by far, but the size will be simply too much for Pacquiao to have to deal with. It’s unfortunate that De La Hoya has stooped to this level to fight someone so much smaller than him, when he could be fighting Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto and making almost as much money. Clearly, a fight with Pacquiao will bring in more cash, but it comes at a price for De La Hoya, because it makes him look bad by choosing to fight someone so much smaller than him.