By Dan Ambrose: Manny Pacquiao openly admitted in a recent meeting with reporters that the 150 pound catch-weight will be benefiting him and not his opponent Antonio Margarito on November 13th. When asked who the catch-weight will benefit, Pacquiao said “The catch-weight will benefit me.” He then explained why, saying “He will have to come down from 154.” Pacquiao will be fighting Margarito for the vacant World Boxing Council junior middleweight title in this fight held at the Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington. Texas. It’s unclear who’s idea it was to have the fight take place at 150 rather than the full regulation weight of 154 for the vacant title, but you can bet that it wasn’t Margarito that asked for this.

In recent pictures of Margarito from earlier today, he looks extremely weight drained to the point where he seems to have lost not just water weight, but a lot of muscle as well trying to make the 154. Margarito was said to be at 154 during the HBO 24/7 Pacquiao/Margarito episode 3, and he looks like he can’t afford to lose any more weight without stripping off additional muscle. It’s disappointing that Pacquiao doesn’t want to fight Margarito at the full weight instead of using a handicap to fight for the title, because when you drain a fighter of muscle and weight, they’re often too weight to fight at their best. What you have then is a fighter that’s partially handicapped because he doesn’t have the strength to fight at his former best.

Hopefully, this will be Pacquiao’s last catch-weight fight because it doesn’t look good him fighting guys having a handicap working for his benefit. I know Pacquiao and his fans will be able to boast later that he beat a certain amount of larger fighters, but if you need a catch-weight in order to do it, that doesn’t seem the same as beating a fighter at the normal weight with them not being weight drained and handicapped from having taken off too much weight.