By Manuel Perez: I’m really looking forward to Manny Pacquiao (49-3-2, 37 KO’s) facing a real welterweight in WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto on November 14th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Look at the photo. Pacquiao is already starting to look kind of sad. Pacquiao has risen the hype train for the past six months since defeating a limited Ricky Hatton.

For some reason, boxing fans equated a win over Hatton and a washed up Oscar De La Hoya to mean that Pacquiao is the king s–t of the boxing world. I didn’t see it that way and was able to put the wins in perspective. I’m disappointed that so many people could be so wrong about a fighter. But I guess that’s why there’s so few rich people in the world and so many poor people.

Okay, so Pacquiao is probably going to get drilled early and often by Cotto. Old Nostradamus, the future-seeing trainer of Pacquiao Freddie Roach, is predicting a 1st round knockout win for Pacquiao. I’m glad that Roach quickly worked his way into making a 1st round knockout prediction, because it meant that he wasn’t going to be upping the ante any to get some more annoying predictions. Once you pick the 1st round, it’s kind of hard to top that unless Roach started talking about how many seconds of the first round or something like that. That would be funny if he did that, but so desperate at the same time.

It’s good that Roach has made his prediction because I’m going to be loving it all the more when Cotto wipes the deck with the Filipino and takes him out in a decisive manner. There won’t be any need or call for a rematch, because Cotto is going to leave no doubt in this fight.

I know Pacquiao fans are hoping that if Pacquiao does lose, he loses by a close decision so that there can be a rematch between them. Sorry, but that won’t be happening. Pacquiao will likely be too small and won’t be able to take the power from Cotto, a legitimate welterweight. This is what happens when you take the easy road and face Hatton, David Diaz and De La Hoya rather than Shane Mosley, Paul Williams and Kermit Cintron. If Pacquiao was being put in with tough welterweights like them, Pacquiao might have the experience needed to beat Cotto.

I can’t wait. Always could when a fighter is forced to discover things about themselves by taking a beating. But a loss won’t be tragic for Pacquiao. He can accept it, learn from it, I hope, and then come up with some other plan.

It might not be a bad idea for Pacquiao to move back down to the super featherweight division and give Humberto Soto the fight that Soto has been interested in for so long. But before that, Pacquiao needs to face Juan Manuel Marquez first so that they can find out who the better fighter is between them. Marquez lost by a controversial 12 round split decision last year, but many boxing experts feel that Marquez really won the fight. I agree with them.

Marquez won by four rounds on my card, and I also have Marquez winning by three rounds in their first fight. After Marquez gets through with Pacquiao, then he can move back down to the super featherweight division and fight Soto.

That will be a great fight and I give Soto an excellent chance of beating Pacquiao. A loss from Soto won’t be bad either for Pacquiao, as long as he learns from it. Defeat is a good thing if you learn from it and not kid yourself about it. I hope Pacquiao is ready to hear the truth after his losses, because that’s the only way he’ll improve as a fighter.