(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) By Jim Dower: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26 KO’s) had to struggle through some adversity on Saturday night in getting bloodied and slightly battered in defeating WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada.
The judges scored it 117-111, 117-111 and 118-110. Some boxing fans thought the fight was as close as 115-113, although few people disagreed with Mayweather being the rightful winner of the fight. The only source of disagreement was over the scoring.
Mayweather suffered a bloody nose early in the fight when he chose to fight Cotto’s style of brawling. Although Mayweather did a decent job of trading power shots with Cotto, it clearly made his job a lot harder than it should have been had he fought in his usual hit and not get hit style. Mayweather said afterwards that he fought like this in order to make for a more exciting fight. He wanted to go toe-to-toe with Cotto to impress the high number of fans that paid to watch it on pay-per-view.
Mayweather controlled the action in the first and second rounds. Cotto came on in the 3rd, landing some nice right hands and jabs. Cotto continued to fight well in rounds five, six and eight. However, after the 8th, Cotto went into shutdown mode and had little luck as Mayweather changed up his game from slugging to boxing to dominate the remainder of the fight.
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Saul Alvarez UD 12 Shane Mosley
WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) got by Shane Mosley (46-8-1, 39 KO’s) in a dominating but still less than impressive 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 119-109, 118-110 and 119-109. Alvarez did well in terms of battering Mosley with power shots from start to finish, hurting him with body shots in the 9th round. However, Mosley also gave Alvarez fits with his pressure and fast pace. Alvarez looked tired in the later rounds, and seemed frustrated with his inability to keep Mosley off of him. Alvarez was hit a more than he usually does, and he didn’t seem to like it much.
As for Mosley, he looked shot, slow and weak. His chin carried him through the fight by allowing him to take massive shots that would have dropped normal fighters. By just having a chin and sticking around, Mosley somewhat exposed Alvarez showing his stamina problems.
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Jessie Vargas UD 10 Steve Forbes
In a boring fight, unbeaten welterweight contender Jessie Vargas (19-0, 9 KO’s) defeated 35-year-old Steve Forbes (35-11, 11 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The final judges scores were 100-90, 97-93 and 99-91.
It was basically a jabbing contest between the two fighters with Vargas having the better jab due to his size and youth advantage. Forbes came on in the past few rounds to land a lot of shots and to show how limited Vargas was as a fighter. As I said before, this was a really boring fight. Vargas’ stock drops after this sad performance.
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Carlos Quintana KO 6 DeAndre Latimore
35-year-old former WBC welterweight champion Carlos Quintana (29-3, 23 KO’s) gave his career a shot in the arm by stopping junior middleweight contender Deandre Latimore (23-4, 17 KO’s) in the 6th round in a scheduled 10 round bout. Quintana caught the 26-year-old Latimore by the ropes and flurried on him, sending him down on the canvas with a finishing left hand to the head. The fight was then halted by referee Kenny Bayless at 2:19 of the round.
Quintana was in control the entire way, circling and landing combinations before Latimore could catch up to him to land any of his own shots. Quintana seemed to get more confident in the 5th when he started pounding Latimore at will with shots. The ending wasn’t a surprise because Latimore was getting totally dominated by the 35-year-old Quintana.
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Other results on the card:
Omar Figueroa TKO 2 Robbie Cannon
Keith Thurman TKO 3 Brandon Koskins
Antonio Orozco TKO 3 Dillet Frederick
Braulio Santos UD 6 Juan Sandoval
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