By Dave Lahr: Antonio Margarito had a much better camp than Manny Pacquiao, and is coming into this fight in the best shape in years. Conditioning is Margarito’s most important asset. Forget about his size advantage, because that’s not what makes Margarito such a great fighter. It’s his conditioning which allows him to throw massive amounts of punches without stopping. It’s Margarito’s high work rate and good power that causes him to run over good fighters like they’re mere speed bumps in the road. Pacquiao is good against fighters that throw one punch at a time and have low work rates like Joshua Clottey.

Pacquiao falls to pieces when he faces a fighter that either knows how to counter punch or throws a lot of shots, like Erik Morales. If you look at Margarito training with his trainer Robert Garcia during the recent HBO 24/7 Margarito/Pacquiao episode 2, Margarito is hurting Garcia with body shots even though his trainer is holding a big pad to protect his body. Margarito’s body shots are that powerful to cause that kind of damage to Garcia through the big pad.

With the weight advantage that Margarito will have of around 10 pounds, his bigger power, better work rate and animal-like aggression, he’s going to beat up the little Filipino, have him bleeding and put him in reverse gear all night long. Once Pacquiao is bleeding, the fight will be practically ver by that point. Pacquiao can’t fight when he’s cut to pieces. Pacquiao even fights poorly with one cut, but if he gets cut twice, forget it. Pacquiao will be in shutdown mode and will be running like a scolded dog all night long. He fights terribly once he’s bleeding and he can’t fight when someone is throwing a lot of punches at him. It’s like kryptonite to Superman. Pacquiao gets weak when someone throws a lot of shots and he just stops punches and goes into a suspended animation. Once Margarito gets his punch rate up to 100 shots per round, Pacquiao will go to pieces mentally first and then physically when he starts bleeding all over creation like a stuck pig.