Is Pacquiao hurting his popularity with all his mismatches?

By Boxing News - 05/27/2011 - Comments

Image: Is Pacquiao hurting his popularity with all his mismatches?By Chris Williams: There’s no better way to become popular in a big hurry in boxing by being involved in exciting and competitive fights. Just look at WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana. In the span of two years, he’s quickly become arguably the most popular light welterweight fighter in the United States due to his all action fighting style and the exciting fights that have resulted from it.

A big part of why Maidana has become popular is that he’s been matched in competitive fights. He’s not been put in with guys he can just easily blow away to get a quick when and an easy payday. Then you have a fighter like Manny Pacquiao, who hasn’t had a competitive fight in three years. The last fight that you could call competitive for Pacquiao was his controversial 12 round split decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez back in 2008.

It was an exciting fight that just begged for a rematch. Instead of getting a rematch, we’ve seen Pacquiao matched against David Diaz in a terrible mismatch that ended with Pacquiao destroying Diaz in nine rounds. Then another mismatch against an old and weigh drained Oscar De La Hoya, which ended with De La Hoya being stopped in the 8th. A mismatch followed against Ricky Hatton, then Miguel Cotto, Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito and 39-year-old Shane Mosley. It’s nice that Pacquiao has won these fights but in many cases they were bouts that weren’t considered to be a competitive even going into the fight.

The thing is these fights have all been pay per view bouts for fans. These weren’t shown on regular cable. Pacquiao still remains popular, but you have to ask the question whether the match-making is hurting how popular Pacquiao could be. A fight against Mosley should have taken place over two years ago, not when Mosley suddenly started looking shot. Hatton looked like a shell of his former self after a loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. Cotto hadn’t been obliterated by Margarito and hadn’t looked like the same fighter he once was after that fight. Clottey was Clottey. He never really was a real challenge and merely was a fighter that had the luck of fighting in the same Top Rank stable as Pacquiao.

Margarito had a 1-1 record in his past two fights going into the Pacquiao fight and hadn’t looked good since his win over Cotto in 2008. My point is that Pacquiao has been involved with pretty much nothing but mismatches in the last three years. Maybe that’s a credit to him but it also seems to be a case of good match-making. I wouldn’t have matched Pacquiao against Hatton, Clottey, Cotto, Margarito or Mosley. I had no problem with the De La Hoya fight because he looked to have an advantage ins size going into the fight. However, the melting down to 147 seemed to really hurt De La Hoya for that fight. That was his fault. He should have taken the fight at 154 or not at all.

If Pacquiao’s next fight against Marquez turns out to be another mismatch, I wonder if there’s going to be diminishing returns for Pacquiao in terms of PPV buys. When fans are seeing mismatches over and over again instead of competitive fights, there’s got to be point where they can’t stomach it anymore, especially when they’re paying $50+ to see the fights. The only fights I want to see Pacquiao in right now are with Victor Ortiz, Andre Berto, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Saul Alvarez, and Dmitry Pirog. All other match-ups are mismatches. I seriously doubt Pacquiao will fight any of those guys. He had a chance to fight Mayweather but failed to agree to the blood testing that he wanted before the Clottey fight. Now the chance seems to have been lost.



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