Miguel Cotto vs. Jorge Sebastian Heiland possible for June 6th in New York

By Boxing News - 03/20/2015 - Comments

heilandBy Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) is expected to announce his next opponent in the next few days for his June 6th fight in New York. A name that is being mentioned for Cotto is #1 WBC Jorge Sebastian Heiland (25-4-2, 13 KOs), according to ESPN Deportes. While the southpaw Heiland isn’t the best that the middleweight division has to offer, he at least is a contender and a highly rated one at that.

Heiland, 28, is coming off of a 10th round knockout victory over Matthew Macklin last November. It wasn’t an impressive performance from Heiland, as he took a lot of shots and really didn’t take over the fight until Macklin gassed out in the second half of the fight.

Cotto might have problems with Heiland, because he’s better than the guys that Cotto has been facing recently. Sergio Martinez obviously was a lot better than Heiland while in his prime, but by the time Cotto fought the 39-year-old Martinez last year in June, he was one-legged, rusty, and definitely not the fighter he once was. The combination of age, inactivity and two knee operations left Martinez a mere shadow of the fighter he once was.

The real sad part is that Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach tried to convince boxing fans that Martinez was in his prime still when Cotto beat him last year. You only have to take one look at Martinez in the 1st round of that fight to know that it wasn’t a prime or even close to a prime Martinez. He looked totally shot.

Heiland hasn’t been confirmed as the opponent for Cotto, but he’s the name that is being mentioned thus far. It’s hard to know how Heiland would do against Cotto at this point, because we don’t know what Cotto has left due to the careful match-making that has been done for him ever since his loss to Austin Trout in December 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcAqlZQUpcw

Cotto has fought twice since then in beating Delvin Rodriguez and Sergio Martinez. He’s not been an active fighter and you just don’t know if he’ll hold even against a fighter like Heiland.

41-year-old IBF junior middleweight champion Cornelius Bundrage is the guy that has long been considered the leading candidate for Cotto’s next fight, but it could be that the negative feedback from boxing fans about him might have caused Cotto, his trainer Freddie Roach and adviser Gaby Penagaricano to have second thoughts about using him as an opponent.

Bundrage isn’t a middleweight, and he doesn’t have a big enough name to make it an appealing fight to the boxing fans.

Heiland, who comes from Argentina, has good power, but he’s not a huge puncher like some of the other middleweights in the division. #2 WBC Tureano Johnson is a better puncher and arguably a better fighter. I don’t think Johnson has any chance of getting a fight against Cotto, because he would have a real chance of beating him and knocking him out.

Johnson is a great pressure fighter in the Antonio Margarito mold, so I think that’s reason enough for him to be ignored by Cotto. Heiland is a guy that puts his shots together, and he just comes forward looking to land punches. He tends to wear down his opponents over time. Heiland has suffered losses to Mateo Damian Veron, Billi Facundo Godoy, Nilson Julio Tapia and Sebastian Zbik.

Heiland’s last defeat was to Veron in June of 2013 when he was beaten by a 10 round majority decision. Since then, Heiland has won his last four fights all by knockout. He avenged his loss to Godoy by stopping him in the 12th round in November 2013. The only guy of the bunch that you can call a good fighter is Macklin, who Heiland wore down with his shots.



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