By Chris Williams: Legendary trainer and HBO analyst Emanuel Steward had some frank comments about boxing in a recent interview. Steward, who trained greats like Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed, believes that egos are getting in the way of the biggest fights being made. Steward is talking about the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Wladimir Klitschko vs. David Haye bouts. It’s hard to disagree with Steward about that, because these fights likely would have been made a long time ago if there weren’t so many issues holding them back.

But what was really interesting in the interview was what Steward had to say about Pacquiao in the Daily Telegraph article. Steward said “His [Pacquiao] natural weight is around 137 pounds. They [his management] are now cherry-picking his opponents. When you have eight weight classes [instead of 17 like now], those who moved up the weight divisions really were special fighters. I’m not saying that there are not great fighters around today, but it is manipulated, and the best fighters are often protected.”

I really agree with Steward on these views. Back when there was only eight divisions, it would have been impossible for Pacquiao to win the titles he has now, because he would have stopped at the point where he got to the welterweight division. There’s no way Pacquiao would moved up to middleweight and taken on someone like Sergio Martinez. We don’t even know if Martinez would be the guy. It could be Andre Ward, Carl Froch or Lucian Bute holding the middleweight title. Can you see Pacquiao fighting and beating any of those guys? I can’t.

Forget about Pacquiao fighting at light heavyweight. He would be wiped out. But I do agree about the cherry picking as well. When we see Pacquiao facing guys like Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito and now 39-year-old Shane Mosley, you’re left with the conclusion that Pacquiao is being selectively matched. But more than that, Pacquiao is fighting guys like Margarito and Miguel Cotto at catch weights for titles. That’s even more strange, because what is a catch weight doing in a title fight? And who really sees Margarito, a fighter with only one fight as junior middleweight in the past six years before the Pacquiao fight, as someone that Pacquiao should have been fighting for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title last November. That move had me shaking my head.