By Dave Lahr: I’ve been looking at some of the recent video and photos of Manny Pacquiao as he troops around the country trying to promote his November 13th fight with Antonio Margarito, and I can’t help noticing that Pacquiao is starting to look a little flabby around his midsection and face. I’ve never seen Pacquiao overweight before and this has me a little concerned. I know he wants to put on a little bit of weight so he can bulk up to around 151 for his catch weight fight with Margarito for the vacant World Boxing Council junior middleweight title, but Pacquiao is looking like he’s putting on the wrong kind of weight. I’m not sure if he’s eating too much balut or too much bread, but he needs to step away from the table because I’m seeing the beginnings of a spare tire around Pacquiao’s gut.

I guess that’s his strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza’s job to get rid of all that nasty flab, but I don’t know if Ariz is good at helping fighters lose weight. I always thought Ariza was good at building them up and making them stronger rather than reducing them. Whatever the case, I see a lot of useless flab around Pacquiao’s body and that can’t be a good thing going against a bigger fighter that naturally weighs 160+ when not fighting.

Margarito looks solid right now, pure muscle without an ounce on him. Margarito looks like he’s been training for months and appears to be ready be ready to fight right now. If I was Freddie Roach, I’d get Pacquiao on an nice calorie restricted diet and pronto. We can’t Pacquiao coming out there with Pacquiao carrying around some extra backage and then that, in turn, causing Pacquiao to get knocked out by Margarito. I don’t want any excuses from Pacquiao if he loses to Margarito. And we got to make sure he doesn’t have any excuses by making sure he’s in the condition possible. Being a politician doesn’t look like it’s helping Pacquiao’s conditioning.