By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) says he plans on fighting another two to three years before he hangs up his gloves for good. Speaking with Elnuevodia.com, Cotto said he’ll be fighting before the end of the year, although he doesn’t have an opponent in mind as of yet.

Cotto was beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr. earlier this month on May 5th by a 12 round decision in a fight where Cotto looked halfway decent until gassing out late. Cotto said he thinks that was his best fight of his career. Why he feels that is anyway’s guess because he only looked good for eight rounds. I’m sure he’s looked better than that in fights against Yuri Foreman and Ricardo Mayorga.

Cotto acknowledges that he’s come out of the Mayweather fight almost like a winner due to how close and exciting the fight was. To be honest, though, Cotto is kind of lucky that Mayweather didn’t decide to finish him off when he had Cotto badly hurt from a left uppercut in the 12th. Had Cotto been stopped in that round then I think he would have received far less credit than he’s gotten from boxing fans.

I think Cotto is kidding himself that he can fight another 2-3 years. Sure, if he faces guys like Yuri Foreman, Mayorga and Antonio Margarito, he might last another three years. However, if he faces top level guys that are at the top of the division like Erislandy Lara, Sergiy Dzinziruk, Austin Trout, Vanes Martirosyan and Saul Alvarez, I see Cotto lasting little more than a year and then retiring after suffering three to four consecutive defeats. No one is giving Cotto grief because he fought out of his skin in losing to Mayweather, but that was with Mayweather intentionally fighting Cotto’s game by choosing to slut with him in order to put on an exciting fight.

It’s a whole different story if Cotto is losing to guys like Lara, Dzinziruk, Trout, Martirosyan, Cornelius Bundrage and Zaurbeck Baysangurov. Suddenly, I see Cotto making some changes about his plans to retire and deciding to get out of the sport a lot sooner rather than later.