Mosley: Cotto beats Canelo

By Boxing News - 11/13/2015 - Comments

cotto (13)By Dan Ambrose: Sugar Shane Mosley is picking WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) to send challenger Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) to his second defeat of his career in their fight on November 21st on HBO PPV.

Mosley, 44, has lost to both fighters in the past, but he feels that Cotto has more dimensions to his game than the 25-year-old Canelo, and he notes that Cotto is better at adapting than the Mexican Canelo. Mosley watched how both fighters dealt with the same fighter in Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the past, and he saw that Canelo wasn’t able to adapt at all against Mayweather.

Canelo stayed in one mode the entire 12 round fight against Mayweather without making any adjustments in their fight in 2013. With Cotto, he boxed and punched in the fight, but ultimately he came up empty after gassing out in the last four rounds of the contest.

“I think Cotto has a little bit of an advantage because of the experience,” Mosley said to Fighthub. “Cotto has been around the block a little bit longer and he knows how to fight guys to win. With Canelo right now, I don’t know if he knows how to find a way to win. When he fought Mayweather, he didn’t know how to change gears. He stayed in one mode the entire fight. It was very hard for him to change gears. With Cotto, he kind of changed gears with Mayweather a little bit. Even after the fight, Mayweather said ‘Oh man, why didn’t you tell me he [Cotto] was so hard to fight.’ I told you he’s hard to fight,’” Mosley said to Mayweather. “The difference in both guys fighting Mayweather, it seems Cotto has the edge,” Mosley said.

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Canelo tries to box, but he has such slow feet that he can be beaten by fighters that jab and move all night long. The guys that Canelo does well against are plodders or fighters that stand perfectly still so that he can use his size/weight advantage over them.

It helps obviously that Canelo is fighting a lot of lighter fighters in the welterweight and junior middleweight division due to his insistence in staying at junior middleweight rather than moving up to middleweight to fight guys his own size.

On November 21st, Canelo will have the weight advantage over Cotto, but he not be able to handle the movement that Cotto has going for him. Unless Cotto gets tired from having to move around the ring for 12 rounds, this could wind up being Canelo’s second defeat of his career. Some boxing fans feel that Canelo has already been beaten three times already, because his wins over Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara were controversial ones.

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Cotto definitely has the experience going for him in this fight. He’s also arguably the smarter fighter. Cotto isn’t afraid to try something else if what he’s doing isn’t working for him in his fights. His trainer Freddie Roach will hopefully have some other ideas for Cotto to use if plan-A isn’t working for him on November 21st.



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