Quote Originally Posted by Bilbo View Post
Quote Originally Posted by milmascaras1 View Post
when pacquiao vacated his lightweight title he in no way had his sights on floyd mayweather. only after beating diaz did pacquiao go after de la hoya for a megabucks fight. call me old school but i believe it is much more impressive to fight the best fighters in your division before moving up to fight just for a paper title. and FYI, pacquiao only had 3 fights at featherweight, beating barrera and drawing with marquez. at super featherweight he lost to a fading morales, beat barrera and got a gift decision against marquez. but instead of fighting the very dangerous marquez to see who really was the better fighter he went up to lightweight and cherrypicked on david diaz instead of nate campbell, juan diaz, joel casamayol etc...not saying he wouldn't have beaten all three but he never tried. to me, what is more impressive is someone like julio cesar chavez who had 27 title defenses vs. pacquiao's 5. he olds the jr. welterweight record for title defenses at 16 after having more than 80 pro fights. now, that is much more impressive because he took all comers instead of fleeing them.
Firstly, please learn to punctuate, your posts are impossible to read.

Secondly if you don't think beating Morales, Barrera and Marquez is clearing out your division then we will never likely agree on anything.

Manny obviously had a plan in moving to 147 (5) as soon as he left super featherweight.

I don't know if you've noticed but in the last few years many of the best fighters in the world have been migrating towards the welterweight division because that's where the best fighters were.

Cotto, Floyd, Hatton, Manny (even Marquez) all moved up, and Oscar and Mosely moved down. Like hungry sharks they all congregated there because that's where the big fights were.

I don't see anything wrong with that at all. Manny went after the best fighters in the world.

He has fought Marquez, De La Hoya, Hatton, Cotto and now Floyd Mayweather.

I just cannot understand for the life of me why you'd rather he'd still be at 135 or 140 beating the likes of Guzman, Ali Funeka, Juan Diaz and Humberto Soto when has fought a whose who of the best p4p fighters in the world in his last 5 or 6 fights.

If you aren't happy with Manny's resume then you are clearly impossible to please and rather stupid, no offense of course.

As for those who stay in their own single division taking on all comers, it depends how much talent is in the divison. Many divisions in boxing have very few world rated fighters and rather than facing all comers many are just choosing to be a big fish in small pond.

It's not that hard to have 10, even 20 plus defences against B list opposition, it's much harder to move through 10 weight classes like Manny has done and fight a whose who of the best fighters in the world in most of them.
You are right about the welterweight division, historically it has been the 2nd most glamorous division behind Heavyweight, and almost all of the greatest fighters and modern talents have fought there, Both Sugar Rays, Armstrong, Mosley, trinidad, Hearns, Whitaker, De La Hoya, Duran, Benitez Floyd and Manny.

And you're right about being a big fish in a small pond, people have always said Leonard ducked Pryor, but it's funny he never went up to challenge Leonard at Welterweight, and expected Leonard to challege him at 140 instead. What is more impressive Leonard going up in weight to challenge guys or Pryor staying in Jr. welterweight beating up a blownup jr. welter in Arguello and having beating up lesser foes?