By Dan Ambrose: Former three division world champion Miguel Cotto (37-4, 30 KO’s) made weight today in coming in at 153.2 lbs. for his do-or-die fight on HBO this Saturday against #4 WBA, #9 WBO, #11 WBC, #11 IBF, Delvin Rodriguez (28-6-3, 16 KO’s) at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida. Rodriguez weighed in right at the junior middleweight limit at 154.
It goes without saying that Cotto, #2 WBC, #3 WBA, #7 WBO, is in a must win situation after his losses in his last two fights against Austin Trout and Floyd Mayweather Jr. A loss to Delvin Rodriguez on Saturday will effectively be the end of Cotto’s career.
Cotto has got to win this fight to keep alive his hopes of a huge money rematch against Mayweather Jr. and big money fights against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Sergio Martinez. Cotto’s defeats to Mayweather and Trout obviously hurt him badly, but a defeat to Rodriguez would be fatal.
Cotto won’t be able to try and fight the likes of Mayweather, Canelo and Martinez coming off of three straight defeats with one of them being against Rodriguez. Cotto would be in tough situation career-wise if he were to get beaten badly by Rodriguez because this is supposed to be a tune-up for Cotto to get him ready for the bigger fights.
Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach has been talking him up all week long about how he wants to see the old Cotto for this fight. Roach doesn’t seem to comprehend that Miguel isn’t the same fighter he was years ago, and that he’s an old 32.
The power is still there like a lot of fighters that have aged, but he’s not nearly what he was back before 2008. Cotto does when he’s got someone that’s pressing him with hard shots, but you put him in with a big puncher that can put some pressure on him and you’ll see the same thing you did in his first loss to Antonio Margarito.
Rodriguez only has to stay on top of Cotto and land punches to win this fight. Cotto will break down, bleed and he might even take a knee or two if things get really bad like they did against Margarito. Taking a knee is always an option for Cotto if and when the going gets tough.
In the co-feature, unbeaten lightweight Terence Crawford (21-0, 16 KO’s) weighed in at 134.6 lbs. for his fight against Andrey Klimov (16-0, 8 KO’s). Klimov weighed 134.6 lbs.
It would be a big surprise if Crawford doesn’t dominate this fight and win it in easy fashion. Klimov is slow and doesn’t have much power. To be sure, he’s unbeaten but most of the opposition he’s faced has been less than impressive. He does have a close win over John Molina, but that’s a fighter that Crawford would likely make easy work of.
Klimov likes to put pressure on his opposition, so this should make things easy on Crawford because he’s a counter puncher and he fights a lot better when his opponents are coming straight at him giving him opportunities to land his powerful and fast counter shots.
Klimov has a pretty good chin, and he could make things interesting if he’s able to take Crawford’s shots for all 10 rounds. But without the power to pay Crawford back, it’s going to be tough for Klimov to stay in this fight and give Crawford any kinds of problems.
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