Cotto vs. Hatton Next?

By Boxing News - 02/23/2009 - Comments

cotto44234635By Scott Gilfoid: Predictably, Miguel (33-1, 27 KOs) made a mess of Michael Jennings’ (34-2, 16) farfetched dream of winning the vacant WBO welterweight title by wiping him out in a 5th round knockout. Jennings tried the best he could but he had no weapons to use against the powerful shots from Cotto. Whereas Cotto was laying waste to Jennings with sledgehammer left hooks, Jennings was only able to fire back with pesky jabs. As you can guess, Jennings stood no chance in the fight and was beaten down in five lop-sided rounds.

Jennings hit the deck in the 4th and twice in the 5th. The end came after Jennings was dropped by a right hand from Cotto in the 5th. The bout was then stopped at 2:38 by the referee. Cotto mentioned Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao after the fight when discussing future opponents. Hatton probably won’t ever take the fight though, knowing him.

Cotto would massacre Hatton if given the chance and I couldn’t see Hatton doing any better than Jennings did on Saturday night. Jennings was horrible by the way. Words can’t describe how bad he looked against Cotto. All that running Jennings was doing was really off putting. You can’t call what he was doing as fighting because he looked like he was in the survival mode from round one.

Cotto toyed with him in the first three rounds, giving Jennings a false sense of hope by not tearing him apart with shots. But in the 4th and 5th, Cotto turned it up a gear and made it a fight. Jennings, not seemingly interesting in fighting, did the only thing he could do when faced with superior fire power, he went down. In the 4th, he dropped to the canvas twice after getting hit with a couple of left hooks to the body, and in the 5th he dropped again after getting hit with a right to the head.

I could see that Jennings was going to go down moments before he did, because he started to take a knee and then stopped himself in mid motion. A second later, he went down from a weak right hand to the head. The referee called a half to the bout after Jennings got up.

Jennings was a terrible opponent, and did little to entertain boxing fans with his weak performance. I hope that the WBO doesn’t waste people’s time in the future by ranking anymore fighters with so little power or ability. They couldn’t have chosen a worse fighter to rank so highly if they tried. For this reason, I hope Cotto gets a good fighter for his next fight.

I don’t see Hatton as fitting into that category, because he would stand no chance against Cotto. I wouldn’t want to see Hatton get knocked out again, so I’m hoping that Cotto selects Pacquiao next rather than Ricky. Now that would be an interesting fight.

On one side we’d have Pacquiao with his speed and power vs. Cotto with his devastating power and skillful body shots. I’d have to pick Cotto to take this fight because he’s the naturally bigger fighter and has the better power.



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