By Scott Gilfoid: Only a few hours after going on sale, all of the tickets for the what will likely be a historic blockbuster bout between lightweight Manny Pacquiao and light middleweight Oscar De La Hoya sold out, leaving thousands of interested boxing fans forced to watch the bout on PPV rather than to see it live. As such, the fight what likely go down as the second largest gate attraction in boxing history, just behind the De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout which took place in May 2007. Pretty good considering that De La Hoya probably would be beaten by basically by most, if not all, of the current light middleweight and welterweight champions.

However, his name and crossover appeal is still golden with millions of boxing fans who vaguely remember how good he was in the past. Despite the mismatch in sizes between the two fighters, the fans don’t seem to care one bit. Most of them are no doubt attracted to the fight namely because of the size mismatch, and want to see how well Pacquiao, boxing’s pound for pound number #1 fighter, does against a star of the past in De La Hoya. To be sure, if not for the size advantage, De La Hoya would be hopelessly outclassed by the faster Pacquiao and would likely get beaten quite badly.

However, De La Hoya, 5’10”, will be coming into the fight with a four inch height and a six inch reach advantage over Pacquiao. In effect, this means that unless De La Hoya has really gone downhill as a fighter since his last fight, a 12-round unanimous decision over Steve Forbes in May, he should have no problems beating the smaller Pacquiao even if the fight does turn out to be a grueling match. As the saying goes, ‘a good bigger man always beats a good smaller man.’

Forbes, a former super featherweight champion, had dimensions and speed very similar to Pacquiao, yet De La Hoya easily controlled the fight with his sharp jab and hard combinations and prevented Forbes from getting in close enough to throw his shots. Though De La Hoya was hit with some hard single shots during various phases of the bout, his size advantage was the telling factor in the end.

The thing of it is, Forbes is an inch taller than Pacquiao, and he was enormously undersized in comparisons to De La Hoya. For Pacquiao, it doesn’t look at this time. However, even in losing, he’ll still be able to shine, especially if he can prevent De La Hoya from knocking him out. Short of that, then I see Pacquiao looking bad in this fight.

Pacquiao (47-3-2, 35 KOs) is still at the top of the sport, recently moving up to the lightweight division where he defeated WBC champion David Diaz in a one-sided 9th round TKO. Before that, Pacquiao had struggled in a bout with great Mexican boxing talent Juan Manuel Marquez, earning a 12-round split decision over him. Looking for a new direction and with his eyes on a potential future bout with light welterweight star Ricky Hatton, Pacquiao opted not to fight a third fight against Marquez, instead moving up to the lightweight division.