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"You claim that Pacquiao avoided certain fighters (Margarito after he beat Cotto and Mosley after he beat Margz) but I think you’re forgetting the dates of those fights and the weights that Manny fought at around those months.
Margarito fought Cotto in July of 2008. Mayweather was welterweight champ at the time. He was the guy who needed to call out the winner of that showdown of the Nos. 1 and 2 welterweight contenders, not Pacquiao, who had JUST stepped up from the 130-pound division to claim a lightweight belt by beating up David Diaz one month prior to Cotto-Margarito. (Go look it up on Boxrec.com if your memory needs more jogging.) Why would you expect a guy who just won a lightweight title to call out the winner of a high-profile welterweight bout?
Mosley destroyed Margarito in January of 2009, just ONE MONTH after Pacquiao shocked most of the boxing world by beating up on De La Hoya. Pacquiao jumped from 134˝ pounds to weighing in at 142 pounds to fight De La Hoya in a welterweight bout. Why would you expect a guy who just had his first welterweight bout (and who barely weighed above the junior welterweight limit for it) to call out Mosley after the veteran knocked out Margarito? Nobody even viewed the De La Hoya fight as a legit welterweight bout because of faded star’s wilted “condition” as you pointed out.
The truth is, the jury was still out on whether Pacquiao could really hang at 147 pounds until his fight with Cotto. You can criticize Pacquiao for fighting Clottey but the Ghanaian was a top-5 contender at the time, and he’d never been decisively beaten until the Filipino hero smacked him around for 12 rounds.
You can definitely criticize him for fighting Margarito, but in the aftermath of the failed Mayweather negotiations, who would you have preferred him to fight? Margarito was undeserving but his size, controversy and Mexican heritage helped sell the event."
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