By Chris Williams: Although Bob Arum has said that Manny Pacquiao won’t be facing any middleweights, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach hung out a little hope in a recent interviews, saying that Pacquiao and middleweight Sergio Martinez could meet at a 150 pound catch weight.

Basically, it would be Pacquiao moving up only three pounds from the 147 pound weight class he fights at now, while the 35-year-old Martinez would have to drop 10 whole pounds to get down low enough to fight Pacquiao. In other words, this would be a weight draining catch weight that would greatly favor Pacquiao while badly hurting Martinez enough to where Pacquiao might be able to win the fight.

In an interview at examiner.com, Roach said “He’ll [Pacquiao] stay at welterweight unless [Sergio] Martinez wants to fight at 150 maybe. I’m sure they could work out something with a catchweight.”

That would be a brutally hard weight for Martinez to make because it’s even below the 154 pound junior middleweight limit that Martinez used to fight at before moving up to middleweight. It seems silly for 150 pounds to be the catch weight when Pacquiao recently fought at junior middleweight for the WBC paper title against Antonio Margarito. Granted, the WBC were okay with Pacquiao, who had never fought before at junior middleweight before this fight, fighting for the title at a 150 pound strength depleting catchweight. No asterisk or anything. The belt counted for Pacquiao as his eight world title, despite it being a catch weight fight.

Roach threw in this tidbit about Martinez: “He’s a good bike rider, but not a good fighter.” Interesting. If he’s not a good fighter, then why does Pacquiao need a catch weight handicap to fight him? Why not meet him halfway? If Roach believes Martinez isn’t a good fighter, he should convince Pacquiao to fight him without one of his catchweight handicaps. Don’t hold your breath. This fight is never going to happen, even if Martinez agreed to fight Pacquiao at 147. Martinez is too dangerous and he’s not old enough or fighting bad enough to get the fight.