(Photo: Casino/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) wasn’t prepared at how small and fat former WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) was when the two fighters came together for a face off during their recent stare down during a press conference to promoter their December 1st fight at the Madison Square Garden, New York, New York.

Trout said to RingTV “I am a lot physically bigger than him…Seeing it up close, it was funny…We agreed that if we need to, we can definitely push this little dude around…He did have a little bit of a belly on him.”

Trout is right. Cotto, 5’7″, is a lot shorter than him and Cotto may not even be 5’7″. He could closer to 5’6″, possibly around 5’6 1/2″. That’s incredibly short, and much to short to beat the 5’10” Trout, who will also have a five inch reach advantage over Cotto for this fight. That’s going to significant unless Cotto can crowd Trout and land something big in close.

Trout got to see Cotto with his shirt off during a promo for Showtime, and that’s when he noticed Cotto’s fat stomach. That makes him wonder about Cotto’s off season conditioning for him to put on enough fat for him to develop a small pot belly in between fights. That’s definitely not a good thing to have going into a tough fight against someone like Trout.

You have to look at Cotto’s recent wins and question his weak opposition lately. Let’s start with Antonio Margarito, who Cotto beat last December. Margarito had a bad right eye that had three surgeries going into the fight. I still don’t know why Margarito’s promoter didn’t have him fight some tune-ups to test whether the eye would be able to hold up under pounding. Margarito took a year off after the loss to Pacquiao and during that time he had three surgeries to repair his fractured right orbital bone.

Margarito then went right into the Cotto bout following the year layoff and surgeries. It’s no surprise that Margarito’s right eye swelled up quickly leading to the stoppage of the fight. The win for Cotto wasn’t a special one under those circumstances. You can say the same for Cotto’s win over Yuri Foreman. He had a bad right knee going into his fight with Cotto, and sure enough the knee collapsed on him and caused the fight to be halted in the 9th when Foreman could no longer hobble around enough to survive. Cotto’s win over 38-year-old Ricardo Mayorga speaks for itself. Mayorga was too well past it to do anything in that fight.