By Chris Williams: For some boxing fans they think WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao has become too compassionate with his recent opponents in the past three years, touching gloves, and appearing to ease up on some of the fighters brought in by his promoter Bob Arum to fight.

There’s that side of the argument, which is generally accepted explanation by Pacquiao’s loving fans. The other side of the argument for Pacquiao’s lackluster performances is that he’s getting old and is starting to lose his skills slowly but surely through age and too many wars. It’s hard not to see this as the main reason for Pacquiao’s lack of knockouts in the past three years.

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach told philboxing.com “He [Pacquiao] always performs for me and I’m sure the fire will come and he’ll be okay. But if it’s a little bit more, I’ll be happy. Bradley will force him to fight. If he (Bradley) hurts him, maybe he’ll open up.”

Maybe he’ll open up? That doesn’t sound too confident, does it? Roach sounds like he’s praying that Pacquiao will open up for him instead of expecting it. That’s how it goes when a fighter starts to lose it. Instead of the trainer expecting his fighter to performance, he then prays that they perform. And what’s this bit about Pacquiao always performing for Roach? If that was the case then Pacquiao would have dominated Juan Manuel Marquez in his last fight instead of getting a gift decision last November.

The fact is Pacquiao didn’t perform in that fight and looked awful from start to finish. Roach sure was jabbing six bits to a dozen in between rounds about this and that, sounding like he was pleading for Pacquiao to start performing. But it was no use, as Marquez continued to dominate Pacquiao for the entire fight.

On June 9th, Pacquiao is facing unbeaten Tim Bradley in what could be the best opponent of Pacquiao’s career. This is the wrong fighter at the wrong time for the aging Filipino star. He already got one gift decision, but he can’t expect to get another one back to back without losing a lot of fans in the process. When you get an old poplar fighter who’s aging like Pacquiao, they still keep winning even when they’re starting to lose their skills but you start to see more and more gift decisions. I expect after this fight, if Pacquiao gets another gift, Arum will look to prolong his career by putting him on easy street with some of the softest of his Top Rank stable fighters so that he can keep the gravy training on the tracks.