By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) is the underdog for his title defense this Saturday night against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Cotto, 35, is the older and more experienced fighter of the two, but in this case the oddsmakers don’t believe that Cotto’s superior experience and his advanced age will be a positive thing for him. They see Canelo’s youth, hand speed, and punching being more of a positive for him than Cotto’s experience.
Further, Cotto has taken more wear and tear during his career than Canelo. One of the reasons for this is because Cotto has fought of a lot of opposition that were the same size as him; whereas with Canelo, he’s generally had the weight advantage over most of his opponents during his career. IN some of the fights where Canelo didn’t have the weight advantage against Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout, he struggled badly to win close/controversial decisions.
“We’re 100 percent ready for this opponent,” Roach said via Fight News. “Canelo makes a lot of mistakes, and we’re really going to take advantage of those mistakes. He has youth on his sides, but he’s not going to be enough to beat us,” Roach said.
Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach says he seems holes in Canelo’s game that he feels they can take advantage of on Saturday night. The flaws in Canelo’s game likely have to do with his poor mobility, his stamina issue, and his tendency to fight in just brief spurts instead of for the three minutes of every round. Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya swears that Canelo has improved his game in the last year to the point where he’s fighting harder, and is capable of fighting at a high pace for a full three minute round. We haven’t seen that though because Canelo seemed to struggle with his stamina in his last fight against James Kirkland when he was forced to fight for the full three minutes of the first two rounds of the contest.
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