By Chris Williams: I guess I’m in the minority when I say I’m not the least interested in seeing World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Miguel Cotto’s (33-1, 27 KOs) June 13th unification bout against International Boxing Federation welterweight champion Joshua Clottey (35-2, 20 KOs) at Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York.

I’m not interested in this fight because I know who’s going to win already, because I’ve seen Clottey, 32, fight too many times and have seen him fade badly in the 2nd half of his fights. If this was a six round bout, I would be absolutely interested in this fight, but unfortunately for Clottey it’s a 12-round fight.

Clottey will fight great for six rounds, probably in the lead by this point in the fight because of his better hand speed and good left hook. After that, Clottey will get tired, and punch output will drop way off and he’ll start losing rounds.

Maybe there will be another excuse about Clottey injuring his hand, wrist or whatever, but anyway you want to explain, Clottey will start to lose all the rounds in the 2nd half. Cotto won’t know Clottey out because Joshua has a great chin, so the fight will go down a decision and Cotto will win based on his better work in the 2nd half of the fight.

There it is, that’s how the fight will end up. I’m already bored just thinking about the fight. If you look at Clottey’s fights, specifically his 12-round decision loss against Antonio Margarito in December 2006, you’ll see that Clottey started off well in the first five rounds but then seemed to tire out badly and stop throwing punches in the 2nd half of the fight.

Later, it was said that Clottey had injured his hand fighting early in the bout and that effected his punch output. Fair enough. However, I’d seen Clottey fade in a similar way in his bout with Richard Gutierrez earlier in 2006, fighting well in the early going and then looking tired in the second half of the fight.

I remember hearing how Clottey was running 10 miles a day in training for the fight, and I couldn’t understand why he looked so tired for someone that was running that far. I just assumed that just because a fighter runs a lot doesn’t mean that they’re going to have great endurance.

After the loss to Margarito, Clottey then fought Diego Corrales and Shamone Alvarez, beating both of them but experiencing the same drop in his work rate in the last half of the fight. The difference in those bouts, however, was that Clottey seemed to be pacing himself in the first half, as if he was trying to avoid running out of gas.

It didn’t work, because Clottey looked tired in both bouts despite winning. Clottey didn’t exactly dominate Alvarez, beating him by a 116-114 score on one of the judges’ scorecards, which I agreed with. In Clottey’s last two fights, he’s not had to go late in the fight because Clottey has stopped Jose Luis Cruz and Zab Judah inside the distance. However, if the fight had gone a full 12, my guess is that Clottey would have faded like in the other bouts.

The main difference in the June 13th fight is that Cotto won’t run out of gas, and will end up beating Clottey by a decision. I’m hoping I’m wrong, because I’m not looking forward to seeing a fight that’s only interesting for the first six rounds.