By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA Super light middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) has announced on his twitter that he’ll be challenging unbeaten WBA World light middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) for his title on December 1st at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Cotto, 31, said on his twitter page “I officially announce that my fight on December 1st at Madison Square Garden will be with undefeated WBA Super Welterweight Austin Trout.”

Well, I imagine Bob Arum of Top Rank isn’t too happy with this news because it pretty much tells you who’s going to win the Manny Pacquiao sweepstake for his December fight. It’s obviously going to be Juan Manuel Marquez and Arum can’t use Cotto’s name in the equation any longer.

This is an interesting choice for Cotto because Trout isn’t a popular fighter nor an exciting one. It does give Cotto a good chance of winning the fight but it’s not going to be easy because the southpaw Trout has excellent boxing skills and he’s got the ability to nullify Cotto’s power if he chooses to box for 12 rounds. He’s probably not going to be able to match Cotto in war but who knows because Cotto has been hurt before and Trout is very young at 26. He doesn’t have a lot of mileage on him yet like Cotto does.

Trout is coming off of the biggest win of his career, a 12 round decision over Delvin Rodriguez last June. Trout easily beat a very good fighter in Rodriguez, but made it incredibly boring to watch unfortunately.

Cotto lost his last fight to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in an exciting 12 round decision last May. Cotto’s power and pressure gave the aging 35-year-old Mayweather a lot of problems. Can Cotto do the same thing that he did to Mayweather to the younger Trout? I’m not so sure because Trout may not bother trying to make it look exciting like Mayweather did. He’ll just look to box his way to a decision and win the safe way.