By Dan Ambrose: Former three division world champion Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) has picked out WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 20 KO’s) in order to go after his title and Cotto thinks he’s going to be able to snatch it on December 1st at the Madison Square Garden, New York, New York, USA.

Cotto said during tonight’s All Access on Showtime “On December 1st, I’m going to be the new WBA champion.”

I think the 27-year-old Trout will have a lot to say about that because he’s fighting on a really high level and he’s studied Cotto’s game backwards and forwards and he feels he can win this fight no problem. In hearing Trout talk he sounds so believable. You can’t help but to give him a great chance of beating Cotto because he sounds dead certain about his victory. In looking at Cotto struggle against Ricardo Mayorga, Yuri Foreman and Antonio Margarito recently, I can see Cotto losing to Trout on December 1st.

Cotto is going to have to deal all the height and reach that Trout has over him. This isn’t a slow Margarito with a bad eye that Cotto will be fighting. Trout doesn’t have problems with eye swelling, he doesn’t cut easily, and he’s not painfully slow. He’s also not as old as the hills like some of Cotto’s opponents. Trout is young and he knows how to box sluggers like Cotto.

The Cotto-Trout fight could come down to whether Cotto can knock him out or not. If Cotto doesn’t score a knockout in this fight it’s going to be awfully hard for him to win it because Trout has the better boxing skills and he’ll give Cotto tremendous problems. Cotto isn’t going to be able to win a lot of rounds against a guy like Trout, and things are going to be really bad for Cotto if he doesn’t sweep the first six rounds. If all Cotto can do is win half of the first six rounds, he’s going to be in deep trouble in the second of the fight. Cotto tends to run out of gas in the second half of his fights, and if that happens against Trout he’s going to lose.