Cotto vs. Canelo: A Fight for the “Post” Millennium

By j80caldwell - 11/11/2015 - Comments

1-cotto-canelo-m (5)By J Caldwell: The last time there was talks of two top Latino fighters set to grace the same ring, the boxing world would be set afire. Dubbed as “The Fight of the Millennium,” you’d be hard press to not find at least one boxing analyst that didn’t think either Oscar “The Golden Boy” De La Hoya, or Felix “Tito” Trinidad wasn’t going home with some kind of brain damage. Nevertheless, what transpired would not only shake-up the boxing world, but would stun the sport’s world the world over.

That was then, and this is now! What we have now in the more modern version of a Mexico versus Puerto Rico rivalry is a very game Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, a native Mexican, and an always dangerous Miguel Cotto, hailing for the tiny island of Puerto Rico, a small boxing mecca of sort. Thus, we have the makings for an all-out war on the night of Saturday November 21, 2015—or do we?

If history serves as “proof in the pudding,” whenever you pit an elite Mexican warrior with a cagey Puerto Rican tough guy, what you’ll really have is a night filled with uncertainties. The greatest of which could be this: Will the Puerto Rican vs. Mexican rivalry actually live up to the hype?

Oddly enough, according to De La Hoya, now a promoter of such events, it should be the Puerto Rican fighter this time around as the one doing the moving. “Yes, Freddie Roach is going to have Miguel Cotto in tip-top shape. Freddie Roach is going to have Cotto probably stay on his toes,” De La Hoya said on an interview with Fightnews.com. “The question is, how long can Cotto stay on the toes?” Taking advice from Oscar about “staying on his toes,” could, indeed, come across as a bit of an irony, especially since the boxing world has never forgiven him [“The Golden Boy”] for not closing the show on a bloodied yet thoroughly beaten Trinidad.

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The problem with Oscar’s theory is this: Whenever to put two boxer-power-punchers together, the image most diehards envision is one of back and forwardness—namely, the kind of Ward vs. Gatti battle that should serve to shake-up the boxing world next millennium.

Still yet, what Oscar thinks could happen isn’t without some kind of truth to it—to be more concise, if Cotto, indeed, does employ more lateral movement to his game plan the night of the fight, surely, it could work in his favor—that is, of course, Canelo doesn’t do his own version of a “Tito” Trinidad and become the aggressor, thus stealing the very important championship rounds in the interim. Case in point: you never want the younger, stronger, hungrier boxer—especially in a fight of this magnitude—as the guy who’s doing the chasing. Conventional wisdom posit that the judges will score in favor of such a spectacle.  Moreover, if Cotto does end up in a position where he has no other option but “hitting and running,” what he could essentially end up doing is “hitting and losing.”

Speaking from a boxing strategist frame of mind, what Freddie Roach will probably have Cotto do is this: 1) Establish that great jab of his [Cotto]; a powerful jab to say the least; the same jab that put Joshua Clottey on his seat pants in their June 6, 2009 showdown in Madison Square Garden; 2) Attack the younger fighter’s body with those vicious left hooks; and last but not least, 3) Feint the body and come upstairs with some kind of power punch. Thus, it goes without saying, what will probably transpire if both fighters are able to inflict damage to each other in the latter stage of the fight—a virtual war of attrition. The kind of war that would warrant a “so called” rivalry.

In final, this fight should come down to what’s evidently clear, one for which is rooted in sport’s rivalry. To say the least, when it comes to sports rivalries, in basketball diehard fans take pleasure in watching the Lakers vs. the Celtic, in baseball it’s obviously the Yankees vs. the Red Sox; and of course, in the world of boxing, both diehards and causal fans alike have grown accustom to watching this bitter yet unpredictable nationalistic rivalry between Mexico and Puerto Rico, two of the boxing worlds’ major fight hubs. Needless to say, this rivalry hasn’t lived up to the hype, but could this one be different?

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