Cotto vs. Martinez Face-Off with Kellerman on 5/24 on HBO

By Boxing News - 05/07/2014 - Comments

cotto(Photo credit: Chris Farina/Top Rank) By Dan Ambrose: HBO will be televising Miguel Cotto – Sergio Martinez Face Off with Max Kellerman on May 24th at 12:00 a.m. (ET/PT) following the HBO Boxing After Dark telecast of the Bryant Jennings vs. Mike Perez fight which airs at 10 PM ET/PT. Kellerman will be grilling Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) and Martinez (51-2-2, 28 KO’s) about their important June 7th HBO pay-per-view clash at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Cotto is moving up in weight to 160 to challenge the aging 39-year-old Sergio, who has been physically falling apart in his last two fights and needing increasingly more and more time to heal from his ring injuries. Sergio looked nothing like the fighter that he once was in his last fight in laboring to a narrow 12 round decision against Martin Murray over a year ago last April. Martinez won the fight based on his activity level, but he was no impressive. WBA champion Gennady Golovkin likely would have made short work of Murray had he been in the ring that night instead of Sergio.

Cotto has lost 2 out of his last 3 fights since 2012. His only win in the last two years was against Delvin Rodriguez, a fringe contender. Cotto’s new trainer Freddie Roach believes that Cotto has been rejuvenated with his emphasis on throwing to the body. However, it would seem to be more of a case of Cotto having been backed way off from the high quality opposition that he’d been struggling against.

Roach has Cotto believing that he’s turned his career around, so that’s a positive, but we’re going to find out on June 7th if that’s the case. If Sergio is injury free and 75% of what he was four years ago, he’ll likely make easy work of Cotto. But if this is the Sergio that failed to distinguish himself against Murray, then Cotto will have a good chance of pulling off an upset in this fight.

The one thing that Cotto will likely have problems with, besides Martinez’s power and southpaw stance, is his movement. Cotto does poorly against fighters that move around the ring on him, and he’s mostly good against fighters that stand perfectly still or ones that back up against the ropes the way Delvin Rodriguez did against him.

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The undercard of the Cotto-Martinez fight is lacking and rather poor to say the least. You have former WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman facing Jorge Melendez, Wilfredo Vazquez fighting Marvin Sonsona, and middleweight contender Andy Lee battling John Jackson. Those really aren’t PPV quality fights, so boxing fans are mostly going to be getting the Cotto-Martinez fight for their money and not much else.



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