By Manuel Perez: Although nothing has yet to be said about who Manny Pacquiao’s next opponent will be, you can bet that it won’t be dangerous fighters like Miguel Cotto or Shane Mosley. There’s no way that Bob Arum is going to let Pacquiao be out in with such risky fighters like these when there’s a potential huge money fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. just down the road.
All this talk about Cotto and Mosley seems to be nothing more than a dodge in my view to get Mayweather thinking that Pacquiao has other options available to him so that Floyd won’t ask for too big a slice of the PPV revenue. Pacquiao would incredibly lucky if he could beat Mosley or Cotto even on his best day.
It doesn’t matter if Cotto or Mosley was forced to melt down to 142 or whatever insane catch weight that Pacquiao’s team asks for, it would still likely wind up with Pacquiao taking a severe beating from these guys after they re-hydrate up to near 160.
Freddie Roach has to know this to, which is why Pacquiao probably won’t be fighting Cotto or Mosley anytime soon. Below, I’ve listed the fighters that will most likely be selected as Pacquiao’s next victim.
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. – Of all the potential opponents for Pacquiao, I see Chavez Jr. as being the most likely one picked to be the sacrificial lamb for Manny to slaughter and look good against. Chavez, 23, has a grossly inflated record of 39-0, consisting of mainly C-class opponents and a couple B level fighters.
Chavez has his father’s (Julio Cesar Chavez, the great fighter from the 80s and 90s) name going for him and is a huge draw in the Mexican communities due to his father’s popularity. The only problem that would get in the way of this fight is that Chavez Jr. fights at light middleweight, meaning that he would have to take off a lot of weight just to get down to 147.
I doubt that he would be asked to come in at a weight lower than this like Cotto and Mosley are being asked to do. It wouldn’t be much of an issue for Pacquiao, because in theory he could easily win this fight even if he came into it weighing only 130 pounds. Chavez has struggled badly in his last three fights and had to work hard to beat Matt Vanda and Luciano Cuello, two B class fighters.
Edwin Valero – This is a fighter along the same lines as Chavez Jr. Valero has an unbeaten record against almost entirely soft opposition with only a couple decent fighters among the wins. And while Valero has a perfect record of 25-0 with 25 knockouts, the opponents that he has built up this record against have been average fighters to say the least.
Recently, there was a push to put Valero with the unbeaten Colombian knockout artist Breidis Prescott, but Valero quickly backed away from this fight, I can’t say I was surprised that Valero did this, because many boxing fans felt that Prescott would have knocked Valero out had they fought.
By Valero not fighting Prescott, it kind of reinforced my opinion about Valero wanting to keep his unbeaten record intact at the expense of soft opponents. Valero does have good power, albeit not at as good as Prescott from what I’ve seen of him, but Valero’s hand speed is poor and he fights like a crude slugger.
Valero is the perfect opponent for Pacquiao to beat without getting his hands dirty, and best of all, Valero has the built up unbeaten record still going for him. It would be easy to sell the fight to casual boxing public who would be ignorant that Valero has few wins over top level opponents.
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