By Chris Williams: Once Manny Pacquiao gets through with his May 7th fight against 39-year-old Shane Mosley, Pacquiao could be angled next to face World Boxing Council (WBC) welterweight champion Andre Berto and/or WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley. In Pacquiao’s letter to the WBC recently where he was letting them know that he’s vacating his WBC junior middleweight title, Pacquiao said that he “looks forward to the opportunity in the future to proudly represent the World Boxing Council as one of the world champions in a weight division of 147 pounds of less.”

Berto (27-0, 21 KO’s) is the current WBC welterweight champion and he’s been itching to get a fight with Pacquiao for some time. At only 5’8″, Berto isn’t a big welterweight and is just a little bit bigger than the 5’6 1/2″ Pacquiao. Berto has spent half the time in the past three years fighting light welterweights instead of fighters at welterweight. Indeed, Berto is currently looking to fight yet another light welterweight in Victor Ortiz in April. As you can see, Berto is someone that is more accustomed to fighting smaller guys. However, he’s flawed and very beatable, as we saw in his narrow 12 round decision over Luis Collazo in 2009. Since that fight, Berto has been ever so careful in being matched up and he’s kept his title that way.

A fight between Pacquiao and Bradley would probably hinge on a couple of things. First of all, Bradley is going to have to win his unfication bout with Amir Khan later on in 2011. If Bradley losses that fight, it’s hard to imagine Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum would be interested in matching Pacquiao up with Bradley. But you can’t be sure on that, because Arum has matched Pacquiao up against fighters in the past that have come off of losses or have been recently beaten at the time that Pacquiao fought them.

If Bradley signs with Top Rank, Arum’s promotional company, we’ll likely see Pacquiao facing Bradley no matter what happens in the Khan-Bradley fight. It would be an in house fight, and even though it would be hard to stomach the match-up if Bradley were to lose to Khan, enough boxing fans would still turn out just to see Pacquiao fight. Arum can’t put Pacquiao in with Khan, because Pacquiao and Khan are good friends and share the same trainer Freddie Roach. Instead, Arum would have to settle for matching Pacquiao up against the loser of the Bradley-Khan fight. It sounds like a real crazy idea, but then again I thought the Joshua Clottey vs. Pacquiao was an insane fight to make, and it still did decent numbers on pay-per-view.