Geale plans on being elusive against Cotto on June 6th

By Boxing News - 05/10/2015 - Comments

Image: Geale plans on being elusive against Cotto on June 6thBy Dan Ambrose: Former IBF/WBA 160 pound champion Daniel Geale says he’s going to make it extremely hard for WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) to land his power shots in their fight on June 6th at the Barclays Center in New York.

Geale, 34, evidently has learned his lesson from his knockout loss to WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin last year in July 2014. Geale didn’t do a good enough job of making Golovkin miss, and this resulted in Geale getting knocked out in the 3rd round. Geale won his last fight since then in defeating Jarrod Fletcher by a 12 round unanimous decision last December.

“I have to be switched on and smart,” said Geale via smh.com.au. “I have to make him miss, I have to frustrate him. If I stand in front of Cotto . . . go toe to toe . . . that’ll play right into his hands.”

If Geale goes toe-to-toe, he’s not going to last very long against Cotto because the Puerto Rican fighter punches way too hard for him to stand in there with him and try to trade power shots.

The movement from Geale is going to need to be nonstop for him to beat Cotto. He’ll need to jab and move all night long for him to have a chance of surviving long enough to get a decision win. Geale isn’t going to knockout Cotto because he doesn’t have the punching power to do the job on him. But he does have a great jab, and he’s very hard to hit when he stays on the move.

Against Golovkin, Geale wasn’t able to move nearly enough for him to escape punishment. However, Golovkin is superb at cutting off the ring and forcing his opponents to exchange.

Cotto isn’t quite as good at cutting off the ring against mobile fighters, but he is pretty good. The difference between the 5’7” Cotto and the 5’10” Golovkin is the size, reach and talent level of Golovkin. He also might be able to hit a little harder than Cotto.

“Cotto has pretty good skills, fast hands and everyone knows he’s powerful,” Geale said. “So I’m going to make it as hard as I can for him to land those big punches. I’m not going to be a sitting duck. I’ll be punching, I’ll be moving and I’ll be punching again.”

Geale is going to need to take the pro-Cotto crowd out of the fight by giving them few opportunities to cheer for Cotto. One way to do that is to slow down the pace of the fight by using a lot of movement to keep Cotto from landing his big power punches. Cotto is vulnerable to getting out-boxed as we saw in his losses to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Austin Trout. Cotto hasn’t improved since them. What’s changed is he was matched against the gimpy-kneed past his past Sergio Martinez last year in June, and before that against Delvin Rodriguez. Cotto has yet to face a middleweight of talent in his prime. Geale isn’t in his prime at this point in his career but he can still move well. That might be enough for him to get a decision over Cotto.



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