By Chris Williams: Everywhere you turn, we’ve been hearing how bad Manny Pacquiao has been looking in sparring and in his regular training, but here Pacquiao is saying he’s looking better. In an article by Ronnie Nathanielsz at Inquier.net, Pacquiao says “It [referring to his sparring’ went okay. My speed, power and footwork are back.” In the same article, Pacquiao’s sparring partners Amir Khan, Glen Tapia and Michael Media were all supposedly impressed with Pacquiao. I think Pacquiao’s camp is purposely creating drama to try and pump interest in his November 13th Pay-per-view fight with Antonio Margarito.

The fight will cost a small fortune to buy at $55, and unless he you really believe that Margarito has a chance, you’re likely not going to be wanting to fork over that kind of bread just to see what appears to be a mismatch between Pacquiao and Margarito. It’s a weird fight to begin with, because both fighters are in the same Top Rank stable. But what makes it all the more strange is it’s another catch weight fight involving a title for Pacquiao. I suspect that eventually the boxing commissions are going to do away with fighters being permitted to fight at catch weights for titles, because there’s too much power when you have a hugely popular fighter like Pacquiao being able to do this. He fought at a catch weight against the WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto last year. I see there being a rule created some day against these types of fights.

Beyond the catch weight issue, is Margarito with his recently being caught with loaded hand wraps. Of all the fighters that Bob Arum had to pick from, why on earth would he choose Margarito. And Arum is predicting that this fight is going to do more than 1.3 million buys, better numbers than Pacquiao’s fight against Oscar De La Hoya in 2008. With a lot of people not being happy with the choice of opponent for Pacquiao, it seems bizarre that Arum would predict that kind of number for this fight. Margarito is disliked by a lot of hardcore fans, and it’s unclear how many of them will be watching this fight. The casual boxing fans probably have never heard of Margarito or are only vaguely familiar with him. There’s not going to be enough of them get the kinds of numbers that Arum is talking about.

The icing on the cake for this fight is the way that we keep hearing how terrible Pacquiao looks from day to day. It’s either he looks awful or he’s looking great. Arum sounds like he’s really hoping that Pacquiao wins, even though Margarito also fights for him. But the constant changing of the message that comes out of the Pacquiao camp. It just strikes me like they’re trying to get people to think Pacquiao is vulnerable so that that people purchase the fight in higher numbers.