By Lester Salvador
All of this pressure being put on Floyd Mayweather Jr to go up to the middleweight division and fight Gennady Golovkin is ridiculous. Why does Mayweather have to go up to middleweight when he has already proven himself against the best?
Nobody seems to put this same type of pressure on someone like Manny Pacquiao. He actually needs to do something like this to prove he belongs with the All Time Greats.
Mayweather already accomplished great feats and has the technical skills that could give any fighter in history trouble. Pacquiao has been touted as being the next Roberto Duran or the modern day Henry Armstrong, and it wasn’t until he got exposed and put to sleep by Juan Manuel Marquez that some people finally woke up to realize he wasn’t as great as the media made him out to be.
The worst time I had in boxing was having to endure the Pacquiao fan boys before his KO loss, and let me tell you it was excruciating. These fanatics were the worst because they knew nothing about boxing. They believed he could whoop any fighter from history in his division, and the worst part is they tried to justify his victory over Miguel Cotto as legit, even though, he forced him to drain down to a catchweight.
In my opinion, Pacquiao isn’t even on Miguel Cotto’s level. Manny will never go up to middleweight like Cotto did and beat the lineal champion Sergio Martinez, that takes real courage. If Pacquiao wants to salvage his career and prove people wrong, he is the guy who needs to jump up to middleweight with no catchweight stipulation and fight Gennady Golovkin. He needs to stop pulling up these fighters from lower weights and fighting at catchweights.
Roberto Duran did it, he went all the way up to middleweight and went toe to toe with Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Duran might have lost the fight but he went the distance and took every shot the much bigger Hagler threw at him, he showed he was a real bad ass.
Pacquiao and Duran’s names don’t belong together, one is a real tough guy the other is the catchweight king who needs to drain fighters to beat them. If you are going to go up in weight fight them at their weight or else stay back down in your division.
I love the sweet science of boxing and enjoy sharing my opinion on it. Boricua!