By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya, Golden Boy Promotions President, sees WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto as having a style that will give Floyd Mayweather Jr. fits on May 5th in their fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

De La Hoya said this on his twitter page: [Cotto has] “a very unique and interesting style [that will] give (M)ayweather some fits. Cotto is patient and calculated with his punches, and this new trainer he has will get him in great shape.”

I disagree completely with De La Hoya, but I can understand how he’d be trying to hype up Cotto’s chances for this fight because it wouldn’t look good De La Hoya coming clean by admitting that Cotto has no chance to win this fight. Cotto is basically a fighter that left his best behind him over 1000 days ago. He’s not the same fighter that he was before his beat down by Antonio Margarito in July 2008. And his promoter Bob Arum sure seems like he’s gotten an idea about that, because he’s only put him in one tough fight since the Margarito loss when he threw Cotto in with Manny Pacquiao and he was taken completely apart. Cotto lost badly to Pacquiao in 2009, and has been put in with the following fighters since then: Ricardo Mayorga, Yuri Foreman and Margarito. Why hasn’t Cotto been matched against tougher guys? Well, I have a sinking suspicion because he’s not the same fighter he was in the past and Arum doesn’t want to take any chances that he’ll start taking knees again when he faces someone that’s actually good.

Mayweather Jr. has slipped a little as well, because his legs look heavy and he can’t move like he used to. He doesn’t throw as many punches and and seems to focus entirely on counter punching now perhaps in an effort to conserve strength now that he’s aging. However, he’ll still have more than enough to pick Cotto apart and get an easy stoppage in this fight.