Cotto-Mayorga: Look for Miguel to run on Saturday night

By Boxing News - 03/08/2011 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: If this fight had taken place in 2008 before Miguel Cotto’s fight with Antonio Margarito, we’d see Cotto going right at Ricardo Mayorga on Saturday night, looking to slug it out with him in their pay-per-view fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

However, Cotto has taken one too many beatings against Antonio Margarito, Manny Pacquiao, Shane Mosley, Zab Judah and Joshua Clottey, and it’s changed how Cotto fights. Cotto now moves a lot and seems much less confident when he starts getting hit compared to before. You can see it in Cotto’s body language.

When he starts getting hit a lot, he seems to panic, get flustered and quickly lose confidence. This is Cotto’s pattern now and we’ve seen it in fights against Mosley, Pacquiao and Clottey. We didn’t see it in Cotto’s last fight against Yuri Foreman, perhaps only because Foreman injured his right knee in the 7th before he could start to lay his hands on Cotto with great frequency.

Cotto’s trainer Emanuel Steward has already leaked the game plan for the Mayorga fight by saying he plans on having Cotto move a lot more. I’d say Cotto is going to be moving just a little more, but rather a lot more. Cotto is probably be on his bicycle from round one. I’m sure Cotto would like to stand and trade with Mayorga to please his many boxing fans that will be watching this fight at the MGM Grand, and on PPV.

However, Cotto is smart enough to realize that if he stands and trades with the hard hitting Mayorga, Cotto could quickly break apart and get busted up and taken out once again. His skin is scared and it swells up fast when hit. Mayorga is going to be throwing as hard as he can to try and get Cotto to quit again like he did in the Margarito fight.



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