Why doesn’t Pacquiao fight African American fighters?

By Boxing News - 11/18/2010 - Comments

Image: Why doesn't Pacquiao fight African American fighters?By Chris Williams: Bernard Hopkins mentioned that Manny Pacquiao hasn’t faced any African Americans earlier today in an interview. I’ve always wondered why Manny Pacquiao, out of all the opponents he’s had in his career, he for some reason hasn’t fought any African American fighters? Now why is that? With the opportunity to face Paul Williams or Shane Mosley staring at him in the face, Pacquiao chose to fight Antonio Margarito recently. The last time I checked, Pacquiao had already fought countless Mexican fighters in the past. So why hasn’t Pacquiao fought any African Americans? You have to wonder how Pacquiao could have not fought any after all these years. Pacquiao seems to have been matched only against slow fighters that either stand directly in front of him are come straight at him. Why hasn’t he fought any African American fighters that can move and box and have fast hand speed? Is it because Pacquiao would lose badly against their kind of style?

Sure, his promoter Bob Arum is now considering matching Pacquiao up against Shane Mosley, but isn’t it a bit late for that fight? I mean Mosley is 39-years-old now and was recently dominated by Floyd Mayweather Jr. and fought to an equally unimpressive 12 round draw with Sergio Mora in his last fight in September. I bet Mosley gets the fight just to shut the mouths of boxing fans who are complaining about Pacquiao not having fought any African Americans, but I wouldn’t be satisfied with that fight. Fighting Mosley now won’t prove a thing because of how bad he’s deteriorated in the past year.

Why doesn’t Pacquiao get matched up against an African American fighter that is still fighting good like Timothy Bradley, Paul Williams, Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Andre Berto? Those are the ones Arum should be looking to match against Pacquiao. Putting him in with Mosley isn’t interesting at this point in Mosley’s career. He’s struggling and I see him as less a threat than Margarito was going into the fight with Pacquiao. If Arum is just looking for Pacquiao to get an easy win over an African American fighter, then Mosley is probably the way to go because I don’t think Mosley has enough left to fight hard for more than three rounds without tiring out and doing nothing the rest of the fight.



Comments are closed.