Is Joshua Clottey a Worthy Opponent for Manny Pacquiao?

The Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey bout is right around the corner, taking place on Saturday, March 13 from Dallas Cowboys Stadium, where some 45,000 people are expected to be in attendance. That makes for quite the event, but is it a worthy one and is Joshua Clottey a worthy opponent for Manny Pacquiao?

The truth is that outside of hardcore boxing fans, most people do not even know who Joshua Clottey is. He's certainly amongst the top 10 in the welterweight division rankings, but he's a long ways off from making the top 10 pound for pound list.

That doesn't mean that he's a bad opponent necessarily, but it means that it's a let down of a match after everybody was expecting Floyd Mayweather to be the other man in the ring. Mayweather lined up Shane Mosley for his next bout, a far more worthy and interesting challenger than Clottey happens to be.

We've come to expect a lot from Manny Pacquiao as he has surged to the top of the sport over the past several years. There have been marquee fights one after the other, from his highly anticipated rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez, to his retirement party for Oscar De La Hoya, near decapitation of Ricky Hatton and his thorough dismantling of Miguel Cotto.

That means that even in the aftermath of a failed Pacquiao vs. Mayweather extravaganza, Joshua Clottey is more than a suitable opponent. He's not a big name, and nobody should have any illusions that this is a big event. But he's a solid fighter and there simply were not many other suitable replacements. It's a much better fight than Pacquiao moving up to 154 lbs to challenge titleholder Yuri Foreman.

When your "easy" bout is against the number 6 fighter in the division, you've beaten number 5 (Cotto), numbers 2 and 3 (Mayweather and Mosley) are fighting each other and you're number 1, it's about as good as you can get (number 4, Andre Berto is a bigger name but was also supposed to be tied up with an earlier bout)

Pacquiao should be tested here by Clottey's strength and size. Ultimately though he's a steady but unspectacular boxer who has a problem living up to his potential and staying busy in the ring. That means that Pacquiao should win the affair without too much problem, hopefully re-setting the stage of Pacquiao vs. Mayweather later in the year.

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