Cotto: I was surprised I knocked Sergio Martinez down three times

By Boxing News - 06/08/2014 - Comments

cotto00000(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KO’s) expected to be able to beat the 39-year-old Sergio Martinez (51-3-2, 28 KO’s) to take his WBC 160-pound title last night, as he firmly believed that the game plan that his head trainer Freddie Roach had laid out for him would be more than good enough to lead him to victory over the aging and less than 100% Martinez.

Cotto didn’t realize how easy it was going to be, as he didn’t foresee himself putting Martinez down on the canvas three times in the 1st round and four times in the fight. Cotto thought it would still be a tough fight where he would have to work hard for the victory. What he found instead was that Martinez didn’t have the leg strength under him in order to get the victory, and make a good fight of it.

“I was a little surprised I knocked him down three times” Cotto said at the post-fight press conference.

You can call it good match-making by Roach, Cotto and Bob Arum of Top Rank to see that the 39-year-old Martinez was literally on his last leg at this point in his career, or you can spin it to say that Cotto showed how great he is by following what can be described as the perfect game plan by his trainer Freddie Roach. But at the same time, you can’t really look at how weak Martinez’s knees looked last night and say that Cotto proved himself to be the best fighter in the middleweight division. Cotto didn’t prove that last night. He just proved that he could beat what’s left of Martinez, who clearly is at the very end stage of his career at 39.

For Cotto to be crowned as the best champion in the middleweight division, he’s going to need to show a ton of courage by stepping it up to fight Gennady Golovkin. That fight probably will never happen, though, because Roach said that Cotto has maybe 3 fights left in his career at best. Those three fights will likely involve one or all of the following fighters: Floyd Mayweather Jr, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and likely a rematch against one of those fighters.

Golovkin is a party wrecker and there’s likely no way that Arum and Roach would agree to toss Cotto into the ring with a guy like that. Cotto would go from being looked at as the best to being seen as someone who merely took advantage of an aging fighter in Sergio Martinez. A Golovkin knockout of Cotto would definitely put things in perspective about Cotto, wouldn’t it? That’s why a Cotto-Golovkin fight likely will never happen because Golovkin is real deal, and not some old guy with two bad knees that took the fight after being out of the ring for 14 months.

It really wasn’t a surprise that Cotto knocked Martinez down three times, because he was like a guy on a bike with two flat tires trying to peddle in mud. Martinez couldn’t stay on his feet even when hit with jabs because he didn’t have the leg stability under him. You have to wonder if his knee points are still loose after the surgeries that he’s had on them.



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