Roach: Martinez was on his bike the entire night

By Boxing News - 06/08/2014 - Comments

martinez656676By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach got a chance to gloat after his fighter Miguel Cotto’s 10th round TKO win tonight over WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-3-2, 28 KO’s) in an upset win at MSG New York. Either Cotto was too strong or Martinez’s surgically repaired knees were too weak. It doesn’t matter. The end result was a one-sided slaughter with Cotto putting Martinez down on the canvas like he was a yo-yo in dropping him 4 times.

Roach said after the fight “He [Martinez] was on the bike the entire night. I’m so satisfied in this win I don’t even want to think about what’s next. He [Cotto] responded well [to being hit by Martinez]. He was never hurt. This is the fight I wanted. He’s maybe one of the best students I’ve ever had.”

Well, the fight was so one-sided it was like a full scale route. Of course, Cotto wasn’t going to get hit in a fight like that. How could he? Martinez was flat-footed the entire fight, and moving like he was walking on eggshells. I’ve never seen a fighter with knees as bad as Martinez except when watching older baseball players trying to field.

Martinez was forced to move after getting staggered and put down three times in the 1st round. Believe me, if the shoe was on the other foot, I think Roach would have been telling Cotto to get on his bike and stay on it. But at least Martinez didn’t take a knee to get out of the fight. He fought until the bitter end when his trainer Sarmiento pulled the plug on the fight.

Cotto landed 54% of his shots in the fight compared to Martinez’s 31%, according to CompuBox stats.

You really can’t say much about how good Cotto is or isn’t from this fight because Martinez’s knees were so bad. Anyone with two eyes could see that Martinez was in a bad way in trying to fight with the way his knees looked. You don’t want to take credit away from Cotto for the victory, but it’s hard to give him any more than half credit for the win because of how rickety both of Martinez’s knees looked.

Martinez’s trainer Pablo Sarmiento said “He never recovered from the first round, and I did what I had to do [in stopping it at the start of the 10th]. We have to tip our hat. Cotto is a great champion.



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