By Manuel Perez: Manny Pacquiao says he prepared for any strategy that Miguel Cotto elects to use in their November 14th fight, saying “If I press the fight I’m sure he [Cotto] would run. And if I wait, he’ll come in. That is what will happen, if he either runs or takes the fight to me, it’s all right with me.” So in other words, Pacquiao sounds like he’s maybe too confident right now.

To listen to Pacquiao talk, he looks to me be more than a little confident from past success from the Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton wins.

To hear Pacquiao tell it, he’s going to dominate Cotto, a bigger and stronger fighter, as if Pacquiao is fighting one of his super featherweight opponents. Pacquiao seems to forget that he hasn’t yet fought the best in the welterweight or even the light welterweight divisions.

If Pacquiao believes that Oscar De La Hoya was one of the best welterweights in boxing at the time that he fought him, then Pacquiao needs to have someone sit him down break the bad news to him about Oscar. De La Hoya wasn’t one of the best welterweights or one of the best light middleweights at the time that Pacquiao got to him. De La Hoya may have been ranked high by the sanctioning bodies, but that doesn’t mean anything.

If you have put De La Hoya in with someone like Alfredo Angulo and James Kirkland, Oscar would have been probably massacred even worse than what Pacquiao. Of course it would be worse, those fighters could punch a hole through a wall and would make quick work of De La Hoya.

Okay, so De La Hoya was like a mummified fighter that was still there in body but his ability had left him a long time ago before Pacquiao decided to fight him. The same goes for Hatton. He had been showing cracks in his game since he was defeated by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2007.

Besides that, look at the fighters that Hatton had chose to fight since beating Kostya Tszyu in 2005: Carlos Maussa, Luis Collazo, whom he beat by a questionable 12 round decision, Juan Urango, Jose Luis Castillo, Mayweather, Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi. Out of all those names, I consider only the fight against Mayweather as a true world class opponent.

Hatton somehow conveniently missed fighting top light welterweights during that time like Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt, Marcos Maidana, Victor Ortiz, Junior Witter, and Ricardo Torres. It looks like Hatton was steering away from the most dangerous fighters in the division for the most part and taking on easier opponents.

Okay, so the win over Hatton is no big deal because he hadn’t proven that he was still among the best in the division in the past three years. He was riding along on his past resume alone rather than still proving that he was the best.