By Manuel Perez: In a recent interview, Antonio Margarito (36-5, 26 KOs) made the outlandish prediction that he’d “knock Cotto out in 4,” which if you were to believe Margarito’s boast, it would seem to indicate that he plans on rolling over Cotto in a quick fashion. Knowing Margarito, he probably believes in just what he says, because he often makes predictions of this kind, telling the interviewer exactly what he’s going to do in a fight. He then goes out and does just what he said he was going to do.
I guess there’s no real mystery about what Margarito plans on doing in his July 26th title at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Margarito will do what he always does, namely to go directly after Cotto and try to bury him with punches, and take him out as fast as he can. If this were another fighter, someone like Paul Williams, for example, I’d doubt that Margarito could carry it off. However, in this case, I think he actually has the ammunition to make it happen. Cotto hasn’t ever fought a fighter with the same offensive capabilities as Margarito in terms of, size, power, chin and punch volume.
In all areas, Margarito is better than Cotto. The only thing that Cotto seems to have over Margarito is power, but in this case, Margarito has the chin to neutralize Cotto’s power, for if he can’t hurt or knock Margarito, then he’ll be forced to have to contend with Margarito’s constant downpour of punches, something that I seriously have my doubts that Cotto can do. I can see Cotto going into his high guard, trying to block shots and fire back with hooks to the body, but that won’t likely be effective against Margarito, for if he doesn’t stop punching and isn’t slowed down by any of Cotto’s body punches, it will mean hell for Cotto.
Normally, Cotto is an excellent inside fighter, where he typically pounds away at his opponents with a vicious body attack. However, that success is usually because his opponents are only average at inside fighting, and have none of the offensive weapons to answer back to Cotto’s shots.
In Margarito’s case, his arms are longer, his punches are much more numerous and he doesn’t slow down for an instant with his shots. Though he was beaten not too long ago by Paul Williams, the reason that loss occurred was largely due to Williams’ 6’3″ height, and his even more high volume punch output, which did more than match Margarito’s own shots.
Even then, Williams wasn’t able to hold up under Margarito’s constant pressure and began to fade in the second half of the fight. In the case of Cotto, he doesn’t have the half the work rate that Margarito typically puts up, and is relies mainly on being able to hurt or stop his opponents. At the same time, his chin often fails him, causing him to be hurt in his fights. On those occasions, Cotto often bails himself out by landing crushing low blows, causing his opponents to collapse to the canvas for a minute or two, giving Cotto just enough time to recover from the shot.
Margarito, however, is less defendant on scoring a knockout in this manner, because with his tremendous work rate, he has time to break his opponent down bit by bit until they finally collapse in a heap, giving them no chance of getting up from the knockdown. I see this as happening against Margarito, who is just too big, punches too hard and is far too busy for Cotto to handle.
When Cotto isn’t able to hurt Margarito or match his punch output, you’re going to see him in a disparate situation, looking angry, scared and perhaps throwing a punch or two low to try and slow Margarito down. It won’t work, at least for any length of time, as Margarito will go right back to work and will quickly overwhelm Cotto with punches.
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