By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach sees a Manny Pacquiao victory over Antonio Margarito as putting both he and Pacquiao in the record books for all time if Pacquiao wins an 8th world title in as many divisions. Roach believes that if Pacquiao can capture an eighth world title, it will never be broken by any other future fighter. Roach said “We’re [Pacquiao] going to win an 8th world title on Saturday. And you know what? That record will never be broken. I’m going to be in the history books with Manny Pacquiao for the rest of my life.”

Oh brother. Talk about delusions of grandeur. Pacquiao is fighting for the WBC junior middleweight title at catch-weight against a fighter that has only one fight at junior middleweight in the past six years, and Roach is seeing glory. It’s kind of amusing, really, but also sad.

Roach sees himself locked in the history books for all time. Doesn’t Roach know how easy it is for fighters to collect titles nowadays with four titles to each division, plus the different designations the sanctioning bodies give. It makes it really easy for fighters to move from division to division and pick up belts easily. It also doesn’t hurt to cherry pick the weakest of the champions each time and then go for that fighter. No, I have no doubts whatsoever that someone else will come along and capture an 9th and possibly even a 10th world title in as many divisions simply by cherry picking opponents, using catch-weights to weaken them and then fighting for vacant belts against fighters that really aren’t fighting at that weight class. It’s not hard if that’s how you do it. But if a fighter moves from division to division, taking on the best of the champions, it’s probably impossible for them to win more than four or five at best. Ideally, fighters should have to at least get a foothold in a division by fighting the top contender before fighting for a title. It’s not exactly fair to leap frog over all the other top contenders in a division each time to fight for a title. I know I wouldn’t like it to be passed over and have someone not even in the division getting a shot at something that I worked hard for.

When a fighter becomes as popular as Pacquiao right now, it gives them a lot of power to be able to get their opponents to fight at catch-weights instead of the full weight for the division. Miguel Cotto and Margarito, both catch-weight opponents of Pacquiao, could have said ‘no’ to fighting him at a catch-weight. But if they did, do you honestly think Pacquiao would still fight them? I’d like to think he would, but I believe he would be gone immediately and would look for another fighter that would be willing to agree to the catch-weight. The thing is, fighters want the big money that comes with a fight against Pacquiao and aren’t about to say no. This is why I think catch-weight fights need to be abolished for title fights, because there’s just too much of a power imbalance between popular fighters and the less popular guys. It sure makes it easy to win a title if you can get a catch-weight fight and/or pick out one of the weaker champions each time you move up a weight class.