By Dan Ambrose: It’s been ages since Manny Pacquiao (52-3-2, 38 KOs) last took on someone that had a decent chance of actually beating him. It looks like his promoter Bob Arum is purposefully just putting Pacquiao in with guys that he knows he can beat in order to keep him winning and getting the most out of him before Pacquiao retires in the near future.
We’re not seeing Pacquiao facing any real tough opponents that can box and move and would have a chance at beating. In the past year, Pacquiao has defeated three of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters Miguel Cotto, Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito.
All three of those guys are championship calibre fighters, but all of them had seen better days when Arum chose to match Pacquiao against them. Margarito has looked like a shell of his former self from 2008, and Clottey was coming off a loss to Cotto.
And while Cotto was the WBO welterweight champion at the time that Pacquiao fought him, Cotto looked nothing like he used to look before getting his backside handed to him by Margarito in 2008. Following that loss, Cotto was able to scoop up the World Boxing Organization welterweight title the easy way when he defeated British contender Michael Jennings in February 2009 to capture the vacant WBO belt. It wasn’t like Cotto had to beat anyone really good in order to win the title.
Pacquiao is now facing 39-year-old Shane Mosley in May, and that promises to be an even worse fight than Pacquiao’s bouts against Clottey, Margarito and Cotto. Mosley is just too faded with age and his many ring wars to do much against Pacquiao. But it makes you wonder why isn’t Pacquiao standing up and complaining about being fed these guys? Why isn’t he pushing to fight Juan Manuel Marquez, Paul Williams, Andre Berto or Sergio Martinez? That’s who Pacquiao should be fighting, not the guys he’s being fed.
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