By Manuel Perez: After I recently learned that Manny Pacquiao was to receive the Edward J Neil award from the Boxing Writers Association of America as the “Fighter of the Year” for 2008, I almost went into shock. How in the world did they come up with Pacquiao as the fighter to receive the award? Believe me, if I was among the panel who had voted, I would have filibustered the nomination until they came up with a that I agreed on.

How can Pacquiao be given this award when he pretty much lost his fight with Juan Manuel Marquez in March 2008 in the views of many boxing fans, and beat an average David Diaz in June to win his World Boxing Council lightweight title and then defeated the totally shot – and weight drained – Oscar De La Hoya in December 2008.

Is that all it takes to win the ‘fighter of the year’ award, wins over Diaz and De La Hoya? I personally don’t count the Marquez win because I saw Marquez winning the fight by at least two rounds, possibly three. I’m not the only one, because a whole bunch of my other esteemed boxing writers saw Marquez as the winner of that fight.

With the controversy that surrounds that fight, along with Pacquiao’s insistence that the faded 36-year-old Oscar De La Hoya come in at 147.

It doesn’t make sense to me. You beat a totally shot De La Hoya after getting him to boil down to a weight that he hadn’t fought in years, and then beat him up when De La Hoya was too weak to fight. Next, Pacquiao beats arguably the weakest of the lightweight champions in David Diaz rather than going after the arguably more dangerous Nate Campbell or an equally talented Juan Diaz.

Either of those fighters would have at least made it competitive with Pacquiao for awhile. In March of that year, Pacquiao had huge problems against Marquez, who other than a flash knockdown in the fight, he boxed circles around Pacquiao for the entire fight.

Instead of fighting Diaz, Pacquiao should have fought World Boxing Council super featherweight champion Humberto Soto, who I consider to be a lot better fighter than Diaz and De La Hoya. This is no knock on Oscar, because he was the best there was when he was young and would have probably destroyed Pacquiao.

But De La Hoya was too old by the time Pacquiao fought him and really wasn’t equipped to win the fight, in particular after De La Hoya was forced to take off weight to meet 147 pound fight limit.