By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum explains why his money fighter Manny Pacquiao (54-4-2, 38 KO’s) has looked so poor in his last three fights by pointing out that Pacquiao had other things on his mind while getting ready for Shane Mosley, Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley.

Arum said to writer Chris Robinson at examiner.com “He’s [Pacquiao] been distracted the last three camps and hopefully he’s going to get his mojo back this camp.”

Interesting. I’ve never heard of a fighter distracted for three consecutive training camps. That’s over a year. I don’t quite understand how a fighter like Pacquiao can be distracted during three camps, especially when his trainer Freddie Roach was saying how good Pacquiao looked during all three of the camps. Is Roach’s perception of Pacquiao’s training off or is Arum’s recollection of those camps getting foggy?

It’s always nice to have an excuse to use when your fighter is struggling and no longer looking like he once did.

Pacquiao fights Juan Manuel Marquez (54-6-1, 39 KO’s) on December 8th next month at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the fourth fight because these guys, and Pacquiao has yet to look good in any of the fights. He did look good for one round in their first fight in 2004 when Pacquiao was able to knock Marquez down three times in that round. But then everything went downhill from there Pacquiao, as he was dominated in the next 11 rounds and found himself getting a very lucky 12 round draw for his troubles. Pacquiao’s luck has continued into his last two fights with Marquez in winning both of them despite boxing fans seeing the opposite result.

Pacquiao looked to be in sensational shape in his last three fights, so it’s hard to understand how he could have been distracted in his training camps. He didn’t have any fat on him hardly, and I couldn’t see any signs of Pacquiao being distracted in the actual fights. What I did see is that Pacquiao struggled with the movement that his opponents Mosley and Tim Bradley used in those fights. It’s not surprising because Pacquiao has been pretty much matched against stationary fighters his entire career that just stood there or came straight at him during fights. That was some of the criticism that boxing fans had about Pacquiao was that he’d always been matched against certain types of fighters that were made to order for him.

When Pacquiao finally did fight two guys with movement in Mosley and Bradley, Pacquiao looked totally lost out there. I don’t think it was because he was distracted during his training like Arum says. It was more of a case of Pacquiao being a fighter that can’t handle movement.