By Thomas Hanson: WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) fell completely apart in the second half of Saturday’s bout with Antonio Margarito (37-5, 27 KOs) ending up getting stopped in the 11th round after taking a knee on two separate occasions in the round. It wasn’t the best way for a fighter as proud as Cotto to be taken out, especially since he went down the second time without even getting hit by Margarito. In fact, it seemed that Cotto went down more out of fear of what Margarito might do to him rather than what he did do.

What hurt perhaps even worse than that, however, is that Cotto was thought to be the best fighter in all of boxing going into the fight with Margarito, and was picked by most fans and experts to easily defeat Margarito. Being one of the few that actually saw Cotto for all his weaknesses, it’s hard not to gloat now. if the fans and boxing writers had done even a little bit of research into Cotto’s past fights, they would have seen that he barely beat a faded Shane Mosley, who appeared to have fought Cotto to a virtual standstill in the bout. All one has to do is take a quick view of the fight and fast forward to the last three rounds of the fight when a very tired and worried looking Cotto ran for his life to preserve his victory over Mosley.

That fight worried me, and made me think, ‘what do these Cotto fans see in him?’ That wasn’t the only case of Cotto showing major defects in his game, for he was hurt badly twice by Zab Judah in their bout in June 2006. Cotto was able to save himself by throwing some timely devastating low blows, which bailed him out of a situation in which he most probably would have been knocked out by the quick-handed Judah. Without the low blows, I have no doubts that Judah would have stopped Cotto.

However, as things turned out, Cotto was able to recover after hurting Judah with the shots south of the border, and eventually came back to stop him in the 11th round. And, then there were Cotto’s fights with DeMarcus Corley, Ricardo Torres and Mohamad Abdulaev in which Cotto hardly looked impressive. Seeing those fights in their entirety, it’s impossible to see Cotto for anything other than a good, small welterweight, but not a champion caliber fighter in the division. I think the loss to Margarito put Cotto firmly in his place, namely a good second rate fighter but not a true champion in the welterweight division.

I think he can beat the other smaller welterweights and the ones without much talent, but against big welterweights like Margarito and Paul Williams, Cotto doesn’t have a chance. I personally think that Williams would beat Cotto even easier than Margarito did, especially now that Cotto has taken such a savage beating at the hands of Margarito.

This is the kind of beating that has a lasting effect on a fighter, and I doubt that Cotto will ever recover from this beat down. He might come back and still be good, but he won’t be able to take punishment like this against without getting hurt and probably stopped.