After undefeated World Boxing Association welterweight champion Miguel Cotto’s (31-0, 25 KOs) close shave victory over challenger Shane Mosley on Saturday night, Miguel mentioned that he’d be interested in fighting the top fights, like Floyd Mayweather, Paul Williams, Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, but for some reason, avoided the name of Antonio Margarito. It seemed like a strange omission, considering the fact that Margarito is considered one of the best welterweights in the division, certainly better than either De La Hoya or Hatton, and perhaps even better than Williams.
While Margarito did, in fact, lose to Williams by 12-round in July 2007, it appeared that he had started too late in his surge to take over the fight. Margarito went into the fight with a game plan to start slowly, and then come on in the later rounds. Unfortunately, this cost him to fight, as he gave up the first six rounds to Williams, and then rallied to win five of the last six rounds. Obviously, this was a painful lesson for Margarito, who clearly had learned his lesson, as he showed in his 1st round destruction of Golden Johnson on last Saturday night. Margarito attacked Johnson like a wild animal, throwing non-stop hooks and uppercuts from every angle and overwhelming the normally tough-chinned Johnson. With the kind of attack that Margarito put on Johnson, I would venture to guess that Cotto would have major problems should he decide to fight Margarito.
As Shane Mosley showed, Cotto doesn’t like when he’s pressured and tends to retreat, trying to fight going backwards. While Cotto is a decent fighter while retreating, it no way compares to the way he fights when he comes forward. He loses much of his power, as he’s unable to wind up with his big hooks to the head and body. Instead, Cotto is forced to pot shot with both hands, which make him an average fighter because without his windup, he loses most of the power on his shots. No doubt, Margarito saw what I saw, and will make it a point of applying constant pressure on the shorter Cotto, keeping him up against the ropes where he’ll be unable to avoid Margarito’s slashing attacks with his hooks.