Bradley: We don’t know how Sergio Martinez’s knee will hold up against Cotto

By Boxing News - 06/07/2014 - Comments

martinez33333(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Allan Fox: Former two division world champion Tim Bradley isn’t quite sure if WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez’s knee is going to hold up under the pressure that Miguel Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) puts on him in their fight on Saturday. Martinez had surgery on his right knee during the past year, and he’s not fought since the surgery.

There are a lot of question marks about whether Martinez’s knee will hold up if he’s forced to fight in an all-out fashion. Bradley says the amount of effort that Martinez is working out at in training isn’t near where he’ll be forced to work at in the fight, and he thinks it’s possible he’ll blow out his knee again.

“He [Martinez] doesn’t really know how his knee is going to hold up, and it can affect you mentally,” Bradley said to ESPN. “I think Sergio is going to box and move a lot, because Sergio knows Cotto doesn’t like guys that move. I think he’s [Martinez] going to try and be assertive early on and try and apply some pressure on Cotto. And he’s going to see how Cotto reacts to that pressure.”

Sergio will be wearing a knee sheath over his right knee for this fight, and that in turn could help him get through the fight without re-injuring his knee. He’s likely spent a great deal of time simulating the type of movement that he’ll be using on Saturday night against Cotto so it’s not likely that he won’t be ready for the fight physically.

Martinez doesn’t tend to spar a lot but he’ll have worked out his knee at full speed. The only thing that we don’t know is if Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach will have Cotto using tricks like clinching to where Cotto holds onto Martinez and puts all of his weight on him to force him to hold him up.

If Martinez has to repeatedly hold Cotto’s entire weight during clinches, it’s quite possible he could re-injure his knee in this fight. Roach is an expert and taking advantage of a weakness of a fighter, and he might have Cotto looking to hold in order to put stress on Sergio’s bad knees.



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