By Chris Williams: For a lot of people who saw Manny Pacquiao’s last three fights they see a guy that has lost a couple of steps and is starting to show his age now that he’s nearing his mid-thirties. But Pacquiao says it’s his opponent’s fault by saying they were running from him and not coming to fight.

Pacquiao said to Yahoo Sports News “My opponents were running away from me. After three rounds, maybe five rounds, they were running, running, running. They didn’t want to fight toe-to-toe with me. A fight like that is not impressive compared to the others.”

There a number of ways to look at this statement. First off, the obvious thing you can gather is that in the last three fights Pacquiao has fought guys that know how to box and have used movement, and boxing skills to expose that gap in Pacquiao’s game.

It’s no mystery that Pacquiao has been matched up pretty much entire career against guys that came right at him or just stood stationary for him to beat up on. A lot of boxing fans wondered why Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum never put him in with guys that used movement and knew how to use the entire ring. It’s unfortunate that it took this long before Pacquiao was finally put in with guys that know how to use the ring instead of just standing in place waiting for him. However, what Pacquiao says doesn’t really explain away why he looked so poorly against Juan Manuel Marquez last November. If you saw that fight you’ll have noticed that Marquez came right at Pacquiao the entire fight and wasn’t circling the ring and he certainly wasn’t running.

So what happened there? Pacquiao looked poor and Marquez wasn’t running. Is Pacquiao just making up excuses to cover up that appears to be aging and losing his ability to fight hard like he used to? Pacquiao’s excuse that his opponents were running from him doesn’t explain why Pacquiao only shuffles around the ring now and can no longer jump around like he once could as early as three years ago.

Is it just a coincidence that Pacquiao has suddenly started looking poor at the same time that his legs have stopped moving for him like they once did? Is Pacquiao’s legs slowing down because of his opponents running or is he simply getting old and unable to come to terms with that reality?