Cotto defeats Rodriguez by 3rd round stoppage

By Boxing News - 10/05/2013 - Comments

cotto765By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) ended up his two-fight losing streak tonight in destroying an over-matched Delvin Rodriguez (28-7-3, 16 KO’s) in a 3rd round knockout at the Amway Center, in Orlando, Florida, USA.

Cotto dropped Rodriguez with two big left hooks to the head in the 3rd round. Referee Frank Sanatore Jr. didn’t give Rodriguez a chance to continue to and immediately stopped the fight at 0:18 of the round.

Cotto used his left hook more to the body in this fight than he had in his previous fights dating back to earlier in his career when that was his main weapon. Cotto can thank his trainer Freddie Roach for seeing the wisdom in having him use that tool from his toolbox because Cotto had gotten away from using his left hook to throw body shots.

Cotto had become more of a jab and right hand fighter in recent years and that might be due to shots that he has to absorb to get close enough to throw his left hook. But tonight it didn’t matter because Rodriguez didn’t have enough power to keep Cotto off of him, so he was able to get close enough to nail him with hard body shots in all three rounds.

Cotto’s power looked really good with his left hand tonight. If he could fight like this all the time he could probably give guys like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara problems.

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In the dull co-feature bout, undefeated Terence Crawford (22-0, 16 KO’s) defeated Andrey Klimov (16-1, 8 KO’s) by a boring 10 round unanimous decision by the scores 100-90, 100-90 and 100-90. The crowd booed the fight all night long, and sadly that didn’t do much to motivate either of the fighters to battle harder.

Crawford’s promoter Bob Arum should have known better than to match Crawford against a pure boxer like Klimov because Crawford isn’t a really exciting fighter as it is, but when you mix him with another boxer like tonight with Klimov, it’s a recipe for pure boredom.

Crawford stood on the outside most of the fight jabbing and looking for opportunities to land his counter punches. However, after Klimov tasted Crawford’s power early, he stopped taking chances and chose to stay on the outside and throw rare punches. Crawford doesn’t really have the kind of offense that can make things happen, so the fight evolved into a boring affair with both guys starting at each other from the outside exchanging every once in a while. Crawford did dominate but it was still very boring.

I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to have Crawford fighting in the co-feature bouts unless he’s matched against someone that is extremely aggressive because tonight’s fight was a real buzz-kill in terms of killing excitement.

The fans actually cheered Crawford and Klimov when they came out for the 10 round because they were relieved the fight was about to end.

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Other boxing action tonight:

Jason Velez UD 10 Dat Nguyen
Jorge Melendez TKO 2 Jamaal Davis
Moises Carasquillo Jr. UD 4 Steven Chadwick
Ricky Tomlinson SD 4 Lamar Charlton



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