By Chris Williams: Trainer Emanuel Steward is impressed with Manny Pacquiao’s career and sees him as a top 12 all time great. I wonder if Steward is secretly hoping to get coaching job with Pacquiao, because no way do I see Pacquiao as a top 12 all time great or even a top 50 all time great. I see Pacquiao as someone that would struggle to even make the top 100. His skills are too primitive and crude for him to be a top 12 type of fighter in my eyes. Pacquiao is just someone that throws a lot of punches and has fast hands.

Those guys are a dime a dozen. A real way to tell how good Pacquiao is to watch his two fights with Juan Manuel Marquez where Pacquiao was out-boxed and arguably beaten in both fights. If Pacquiao is top 12 in Steward’s book, then I guess that makes Marquez top 11, because he controlled both of his fights with the Filipino star.

In an interview at ontheropesboxingradio at eastsideboxing.com, Steward says “Among all time greats, I would say he [Pacquiao] has to be in the top dozen, not so much for what he did, not so much for what he did in the last couple of years. It’s the earlier part of his career that lasts about two or three years ago. When you seep fighting against the best continually, and that’s what I rank greatness on – performances against the best, not just all of these records and eight or nine championships. To me that doesn’t really mean anything. You got your four different organizations, maybe five depending on what you want to respect, and every five pounds is a different weight division. But the fact that he’s fought some of the best, and most of the guys were future hall of fame guys themselves. He has performed on a top level and only lost one fight and knocked out that opponent [Morales was weight drained in the rematches], which was Morales, twice. Just to have this longevity, I would have to rate Pacquiao in the top dozen fighters of all time.”

I don’t agree. I think the eight titles that Pacquiao has captured are totally meaningless because he’s captured a lot of them against flawed fighters, especially in recent years with his catch weight title fights against fellow Top Rank stable fighters. I don’t count any of those title victories.