You know all the sayings. Well, they all apply.

If Manny Pacquiao, whose highest-ever fighting weight came in June at 135 pounds, is to defeat Oscar de la Hoya this Saturday, he cannot let the size become an issue.

Some have painted the size as the reason to call this fight a "circus" or a "joke"; others have decided it's a media myth created by those opposed to the fight for whatever reasons they may have.

But facts are facts. Oscar de la Hoya is a bigger man than Manny Pacquiao. He's four inches taller, has a good amount of reach on Pacquiao, and has never weighed less than 133 pounds for any fight, going as high as 160 against Felix Sturm.

Some will point out that Pacquiao was just 17 when he started fighting professionally at 106 pounds. But do you think Oscar was 106 pounds when he was 17? He won a lightweight Gold Medal at the '92 Olympics in Barcelona, when he was 19. So it's doubtful.

The size can matter. It doesn't necessarily have to, and that's probably at the core of a lot of the belief Freddie Roach has in his fighter.

Oscar is a big welterweight, about as big as Antonio Margarito. But he's also 35 years old and really does seem to have trouble "pulling the trigger," as Roach puts it. When holding his own with the faster, more talented Floyd Mayweather, Oscar gave up on an effective jab and lost the fight because of that.

What is Oscar's last truly big win? Vargas? That was over six years ago. Mayorga was a nice comeback win in '06, but we all know the score with Mayorga. The only other wins on his sheet since Vargas are Yori Boy Campas and the debatable middleweight victory against Felix Sturm.

Pacquiao can win this fight, but he's going to have to be at his best defensively. At some point, Oscar will test his chin. And even if he can't knock Manny out, his natural advantages give him the ability to turn this into a toying session if he plays his cards right. He could jab all night. It probably won't back Pacquiao up for long, but it'll win rounds.

How can Pacquiao win? He has to make it about speed. There is no one Oscar could have brought in that truly spars like Pacquiao fights. Manny is a unique boxer. If you watched the most recent "24/7," you saw Bernard Hopkins in Oscar's gym giving his sparring partners advice on how to fight like Pacquiao, and "make Oscar work harder than he wants to work." Though B-Hop meant that to benefit Oscar, he got what Manny needs to do exactly right.

Manny has to move, throw combinations, and light Oscar up with them. I don't think Manny is big enough to be the first guy besides Hopkins to knock Oscar out, but I do think he can discourage him, frustrate him, and make him fight outside of his game. Oscar isn't the quickest guy anymore, his offensive reflexes looked somewhat shot against Steve Forbes in May, and even if he is training to see things before they come, the lightning-fast Pacquiao is going to hit him.

I'm not trying to say that Oscar is slow or flat-footed or anything, but if the Pacquiao camp hasn't watched tape of Roy Jones' win over John Ruiz, then I think they're crazy. Jones was as close to perfect as he needed to be that night. And while these two have an agreed-upon weight limit, Pacquiao will need to be the same. Also in Pacquiao's favor is the fact that Oscar de la Hoya hasn't fought a southpaw since 1997, when he dominated Hector Camacho. Manny can give Oscar a lot of looks he's simply not used to, no matter how smart and savvy Oscar is by now.

This isn't the only way for Manny Pacquiao to win, of course. There are several ways for it to happen. But when I see Pacquiao's hands raised, I see that it came because he was too active, too fast, and too able to box hard for three minutes every round. I see a frustrated and dejected Oscar de la Hoya who has to seriously think about his career. It's not that this is the only outcome I see, either. But if Pacquiao is to win, he has to take the size advantage away. If Oscar's on his game, Pacquiao can't win being tentative.

Source: LA Times

Promoter Lou DiBella has won a World Boxing Council purse bid for the right to stage welterweight champion Andre Berto's next title defense against New York's Luis Collazo, the WBC announced on Monday.

DiBella, who promotes Berto, told The Times the bout will occur on Jan. 17 at a site to be determined. The fight will be televised by HBO.

DiBella won the bid for $675,000. Collazo's promoter, Don King, came in second at $427,000.

Berto (23-0, 19 KO) is facing what should be a final "ladder step" opponent before he starts taking on the best in the 147-pound division, or at least that's how I see it. Collazo (29-3, 14 KO) has come up short in his two biggest fights, against Hatton and Mosley, and hasn't beaten anyone worth a crap since 2005.

This would be a BIG upset for Collazo, even though he is a step up from the likes of Michel Trabant, Miki Rodriguez, David Estrada and probably even the undersized Stevie Forbes. And it's a fine welterweight lead-in night for January 24's Margarito-Mosley fight, too. Glad it's done, glad it's going down.

Nothing terribly interesting, but it's nice that ESPN is bothering to talk boxing, and another feather in Oscar's cap, as he's apparently the only guy that can actually get himself on the network for more than a 10-second blip.

Source: El Nuevo Dia via BoxingScene.com

Following their first career losses, middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik and welterweight contender Miguel Cotto look as though they'll return to the ring in a co-main evented pay-per-view from Atlantic City (Cotto's fight) and Ohio (Pavlik's fight), if we are to believe the rumors.

Cotto (32-1, 26 KO) will be facing the UK's Michael Jennings (34-1, 16 KO) for the WBO welterweight title that Paul Williams recently vacated. Jennings has been the WBO mandatory for a good while now, and though he's barely a blip on the international radar, he...um...hmm. Nah, I can't really try to hype this up. On paper, Cotto-Jennings is a mismatch.

In the other headliner, Pavlik (34-1, 30 KO) will look to come back from his one-sided loss to Bernard Hopkins when he makes the second defense of his middleweight crown against mandatory challenger Marco Antonio Rubio (43-4-1, 37 KO), who impressed with a rugged win over Enrique Ornelas on the Pavlik-Hopkins undercard.

HBO passed on the doubleheader, which is kind of surprising given the fact that it's a legit world championship fight and then a star feature co-main event, but it probably just didn't fit into the budget. If the El Nuevo Dia report is to be believed, Cotto will make about $3 million to fight Jennings. Given the current economy and the two disappointing pay-per-view buyrates Pavlik has done in 2007, this just might not have made financial sense.

Arum's pretty much doing the only thing he can with the show, which is take it to self-produced PPV. Hopefully, he'll not overshoot and try to charge 50 bucks for this, because if he does, it'll crap out and hard. It's not a bad double-header, but it's also pretty much for diehard fans only.

In case you're new to the sport and drawn in by the curiosity of this Saturday's big pay-per-view matchup, or if you just want to relive some of the finer moments in the careers of Manny Pacquiao and Oscar de la Hoya, HBO has made available via YouTube their "Greatest Hits" features on both fighters.

If you've been here a while, you know I started off against this fight. Many here did, many around the glove did. As its drawn closer, I've accepted it as a reality and as a great attraction, one boxing needs to close out 2008. And now that we're in fight week, it has really hit me: Manny Pacquiao is going to fight Oscar de la Hoya on Saturday night, and it's a big deal. Consider me having done a 150º, if not a total 180º. I'm pretty stoked to see it play out.

We've also got a new poll up on the right sidebar, because the time is here. Pick the winner, gang. You have until Saturday at 9:45 ET.

Pacquiao's Greatest Hits:

Can't argue with the lineup, though I do find it somewhat humorous and applaudable that HBO was able to and decided to boil down Pacquiao-Barrera II into mostly the moments where Barrera decided to trade. Those moments were few and far between and mostly contained within the first six rounds, after which he barely touched Pacquiao save for a cheapshot. Of 2007 fights, that one was really high on the list of most disappointing.

De la Hoya's Greatest Hits:

This one's a little more oddly compiled. Really, the Steve Forbes win? It's rough enough to show him going 3-3 in these clips, and then you realize he beat Fernando Vargas, Ricardo Mayorga and Forbes, and the losses came to top fighters Tito Trinidad, Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather.

I guess you don't want to go all the way back to 1997 against Sweet Pea Whitaker, which is irrelevant at this point, and neither of the Chavez wins ever sat right with a whole lot of people, whether that's unfair or not. No point in showing the Hopkins loss, either, since 160 pounds is irrelevant, too. So I suppose if you decide to start with Trinidad...yeah, this is about as good as it gets. But still, Steve Forbes? Could've shown the dismantling of the ever-popular Gatti, or edited the Sturm win down to make it look like Oscar won even on an off-night. Hey, they made Pacquiao-Barrera II look good...

This is all just a sampling, of course. Both have had other big fights, big wins, and big moments. But for whetting your appetite for this big money showdown, hard to argue.

Paul Williams won his third straight fight in his third straight different weight class, beating Verno Phillips by doctor/referee stoppage after eight rounds of body bashing, and Chris Arreola won a three-round barroom brawl over Travis Walker on tonight's Boxing After Dark from Ontario, California.

The opening heavyweight slugfest stole the show, with an again out-of-shape Arreola catching hell from Walker in the first round and getting dropped in the second, only to rebound by knocking Walker down twice in that same second frame, and then a third and final time 13 seconds into the third round. Walker threw 106 punches in the opening round, which he dominated, but it may have helped Arreola more than it did Walker. Arreola wisely took the full eight count when knocked down, then took advantage of a throwing, open, and tiring Walker with power shots that sent the big man reeling.

For Arreola, this was a big win, but it's now becoming critical time for his team to get on his ass about the training. He was doughy, the same as he was in September, again weighing in over 250 pounds. Against Walker, it almost got him beaten. Against Wladimir Klitschko, who he's now in line to face next year, it will get him destroyed. I like Arreola a lot, but his disregard for discipline is No. 1 on the list of things that could be his downfall.

Arreola is now 26-0 (23), with Walker falling to 28-2-1 (22).

In the main event, a nasty cut opened on the outside and just above Paul Williams' right eye thanks to an accidental headbutt in the second round, but the former welterweight titlist still picked up an interim 154-pound strap in impressive fashion, beating Verno Phillips down with a focused and wicked body attack that took all the spring from the veteran's step.

Phillips, who turned 39 today, was game and tough, as we knew he would be. But he was also completely outgunned by the younger, bigger, stronger Williams. Williams even did it without using his gross reach advantage, as he relished the chance to fight inside with Verno, who kept trying to load up on big punches. He did occasionally land one, but way too few, way too far between.

Williams said if a big fight comes at 147, he'll go back down. I assume he'll take any fight between 147 and at least 160, which is what he's been saying.

We now officially start the mega hype for next Saturday's showdown between Oscar de la Hoya and Manny Pacquiao. Be with us this week, as we'll examine the fight from as many angles as we can, and then we'll be live on Saturday night with round-by-round coverage and scoring.

The show starts at 10pm ET on HBO, and we'll be here with live, round-by-round coverage and scoring. The holiday weekend is winding down, and what better way to relieve yourself the stress of wanting to tackle family members than watch grown men paid to punch one another?

If you're new to the site, the round-by-round takes place in the comments of this post, with no refreshing whatsoever needed.

via www.hbo.com

via media.halton.topscms.com

Original article:

North Oakville Today has received word that boxer Mike 'Prime Time' Post died this morning.

Police are unable at this time to verify any information surrounding his death.

Post was a champion boxer and most recently worked as the sparing partner of WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto.

Bad Left Hook sends our best wishes and condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Post.