Regarding weight loss, straight from the horses mouth

[Kev]

Hopkins coming down to 158 at age 39 against Oscar and being a massively big body Middleweight is considered to be an easy thing to do, but Cotto at 29 years old and in his physical prime years coming in at 144 or 145 is considered to be weight draining? That doesn't sound right. That's inconsistent logic.

Nope but it is the logic of Saddo's I'm afraid.

Floyd, only two fights removed from fighting at junior middleweight and after a lengthy retirement can move down to 143 lbs without difficulty as well.

Weight draining typically affects only Manny Pacquaio opponents.

Surely this is not self evident to you? You see the 5 ft 8 inch Floyd is so much smaller naturally than the 5 ft 7 inch Cotto and that's why he moved to welterweight over a year before Miguel did.

It's also interesting to note that Cotto weighed in at only 138 lbs against Malignaggi so a Manny fight at 145 still gives him a full seven pounds to play with. And lets not forget he only weighed in at 146 against Clottey.

But this pound is everything

[JazMerkin]

The logic on weight-draining is inconsistent, & in the ODLH-B-Hop fight I had the same criticisms I have now, I don't believe 160 was easy for Hopkins to make, hence why he jumped all the way to LHW after the Taylor fights.

However, using heights to say who is bigger is just wrong, it's like arguing that Mike Tyson is a smaller fighter than Paul Williams because of his height. Floyd is not as muscularly built as Cotto & that's why it's less difficult for him to come down to smaller weights. I think Cotto can make 145 & be fairly effective, however, my issue is that I think Pacquiao CAN beat him at 147 & it would be a more impressive feat. The difference with say the Wright-Hopkins fight is that Wright had never fought at the weight previously or above 160, which is similar to why people are less critical of the JMM-PBF catchweight due to JMM never being above 135. It is hypocritical though that some of the same people who thought it was ridiculous that Floyd didn't come down to 140 are complaining at Pac for bringing Cotto down 2 lbs.

On comparing Pacquiao to the older fighters from Asia like Harada or Tiger from Africa though, I feel one thing that should be noted (& I have said that I do rate Pac a bit higher so if you still think I'm criticizing Pac you go see Miles ) is that they fought at a time when there were same day weigh-ins & less advances in sports nutrition & technology, so being a 2 weight world champion in those times was as impressive as doing it in multiple divisions now. It's not just nostalgia acknowledging how good some of these guys were.