By Chris Williams: Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KO’s) did his thing last night in beating up and taking the strap of an older fighter with bad knees in WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-3-2, 28 KO’s), but let’s not get things twisted by thinking that a victory over Martinez means that Cotto deserves a second shot at Floyd Mayweather Jr.
The win by Cotto proved pretty much zero given the age of Martinez, the condition of his knees, and the amount of time he’d been away from the sport. Cotto didn’t beat a good enough opponent for him to excite boxing fans about a second fight against boxing’s No.1 fighter in Mayweather. We’re already seeing this in a poll conducted today at Fightnews.com with fans picking Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin as the No.1 and No.2 choices for Cotto’s next fight in December. Mayweather, believe it or not, came in at No.3 behind those guys.
The fact that fans would rather see Cotto fight Canelo or Golovkin tells you that they don’t have much faith in Cotto being able to turn things around in a rematch against Mayweather. Fans are pretty smart, and they don’t want to pay to see a fight if they already know what the conclusion will be, and in a Cotto-Mayweather rematch there will be only one logical winnner and it’s academic who that fighter will be. Trainer Freddie Roach hasn’t made enough of an impact on Cotto’s fighting style for him to do any better against Mayweather in a second fight. In fact, I think it would be much worse the second time around because Mayweather would box and move for 12 rounds, and focus on just playing it defensive instead of trying to please the fans like he did the last time he fought Cotto in 2012.
With Cotto vs. Canelo and/or Cotto-Golovin, fans fans have two fights where they’re won’t know for sure who the winner will be, and that makes for more interesting fights. After the way that Cotto took apart the aging 40-ish Sergio Martinez last Saturday night, fans want to see if Cotto can do it against younger fighters that aren’t coming off two major knee surgeries the way that Sergio was.
In a way the Cotto-Martinez fight was identical to Cotto’s second fight against Antonio Margarito. Both fighters were coming off of a year long layoff with debilitating injuries. With Martinez, it was two knee surgeries that had him moving like an old man. There were no tuneup fights for Sergio to get him ready for the Cotto fight. With Margarito, he’d come off of 3 eye surgeries and a year long layoff. There were no tune-ups for Margarito to make sure that his eye was ready for a fight against Cotto. Margarito simply took the fight without a tuneup bout, and his surgically repaired eye closed up completely by the 4th round.
You really can’t say how good Cotto is right now because they put him in a situation where he couldn’t fail against Martinez. They made it easy for Cotto to win this fight and look good. The way Martinez looked last night, I’d venture to say that almost anyone in the middleweight division would have beaten him just as bad as Cotto did.
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