By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is considering unbeaten welterweight contender Mike Jones (24-0, 18 KO’s) as one of the possible opponents for Manny Pacquiao in 2012. Jones, 28, fights for the same promotional company as Pacquiao and this would be another in house fight for Pacquiao along the lines of his mismatches against other Top Rank foes Joshua Clottey, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito. They were all mismatches going into the fights, but a bout against Jones would be downright horrible.

Although Jones is huge for a welterweight at 6-feet, he’s badly flawed and very beatable. Last year, Jones struggled to beat fringe welterweight contender Jesus Soto Karass.

Jones is ranked #1 WBO, #2 WBA, #3 IBF, #5 WBC and will be facing little known Raul Munoz (22-13-1, 16 KO’s) on Saturday night in a scheduled 10 round bout at the South Philly Arena, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Arum has been bringing Jones along about the same speed as another one of his fighters Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in matching him against mostly weak opposition. Jones is slow, mechanical and not nearly in the same class as Pacquiao.

It would be a terrible fight for Jones to go from facing a guy like Munoz into an in house fight against Pacquiao. I can’t see it as a fight that would increase Jones’ value, because he would likely get beaten up so badly. I think it would be another backfire fight similar to when Arum matched Clottey up with Pacquiao. Instead of that fight increasing Clottey’s popularity among boxing fans it seems to have had the opposite effect with a lot of fans totally turned off by him.

Jones would be better off being matched slowly against top tier opposition and going after one of the two paper champions in the welterweight division rather than throwing him in with Pacquiao to give him a payday and increase his value. I wouldn’t mind seeing Pacquiao fight an unknown fighter like Jones if it were on regular HBO in a non-PPV fight, but you know that wouldn’t be the case. A Jones vs. Pacquiao fight would almost surely be a $55 to $60 fight, and who wants to pay to see Pacquiao beat up an inexperienced little known fighter on PPV?

We’ve already seen a slew of mismatches involving Pacquiao in the past three years and it’s time that he steps it up against guys that have a chance to beat him like Victor Ortiz or Andre Berto and of course Floyd Mayweather Jr. I don’t want to see Pacquiao beat up on Mike Jones. I saw enough of Jones in his two fights with Karass to know that he’d be destroyed by Pacquiao and likely destroyed by Victor Ortiz as well. I’d just be happy to see Jones take on a quality top #5 contender instead of seeing him destroyed by Pacquiao in an expensive PPV slaughter.