By Matt Stein: The word is that Manny Pacquiao will probably be facing Miguel Cotto next up rather than Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Shane Mosley. They’re all great fights, but it looks as if Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum prefers Cotto, perhaps because he also promotes him as well. However, the likely main reason is because Cotto is a fighter that will be there for Pacquiao. Cotto often goes right at his opponents and tries to take them out with body shots and rights to the head.

He doesn’t mess around with lateral movement all that much and can be counted on to be in front of Pacquiao so the Filipino star won’t have to mess with a pot shot artist like Mosley or Mayweather. Cotto did do a lot of movement in his fight with Antonio Margarito, but I imagine that Pacquiao’s advisers’ are assuming that he won’t be moving nearly as much as he did against the hard hitting and bigger Margarito than he will against a smaller fighter like Pacquiao.

If Pacquiao’s team is assuming he’ll get by Cotto and be ready for a huge money bout against Mayweather, I think they may have counted their chickens before they hatched and could be in for a rude awakening if Cotto beats Pacquiao. I could understand Pacquiao being put in a stay busy fight against some lesser fighter, just so that Pacquiao doesn’t screw up and get beaten.

However, to throw Pacquiao in with a quality fighter like Cotto – and assuming he’ll win – is incredibly risky. I could see it maybe if Pacquiao was a natural welterweight and had been dominating the division for a number of years. But, Pacquiao hasn’t, and the two bigger fighters that he has faced – Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton – were both shot by the time Pacquiao fought them.

Obviously, that’s something hasn’t filtered into Pacquiao’s advisor’s thinking, and that’s sad. They should know themselves that neither Hatton nor De La Hoya had much of anything left when Pacquiao got to them. The last thing I would want to do is put Pacquiao in with a talented fighter like Cotto based on wins against De La Hoya and Hatton.

There’s simply too big of a gulf in talent between Cotto and those guys. If you want to put Pacquiao in with a welterweight, find a bottom 15 fighter and see how Pacquiao does against one of them. If he does alright, then throw him to the lions.

It just seems thoughtless to have Pacquiao put in with Cotto after having faced such easy fights like De La Hoya and Hatton. I think this move could backfire on Pacquiao’s team, with Cotto pulling off a huge upset over Pacquiao. I think the same thing would happen if Pacquiao was put in with Mosley as well.

But that’s why you don’t put a small fighter like Pacquiao in with Mosley or Cotto, at least not when you have a big money fight against Mayweather just over the horizon. Pacquiao is a quality fighter, but he hasn’t proven himself against a talented welterweight as of yet, so it would seem smart to either not put in with one, and thus ensure the Mayweather fight goes ahead, or put Pacquiao in with a lesser talented welterweight who Pacquiao would have a much better chance of beating.

Pacquiao’s advisors are betting way too much that Pacquiao will be able to beat Cotto, when Pacquiao has precious little experience against talented bigger fighters. You certainly can’t count De La Hoya and Hatton, can you?