Mayorga To Move Back Down To 147: “Im Coming After Cotto”

By Boxing News - 11/25/2007 - Comments

Shortly after defeating Fernando Vargas on Saturday night and subsequently sending him into retirement, Mayorga, 34, announced that he’s moving back down to the welterweight division – 147 lbs – in hopes of fighting Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather jr. On the surface, Mayorga seems almost delusional, as neither of these two fighters will likely waste their time fighting a low level fighter like Mayorga, considering it would be a fight the general public would have little interest, even with Mayorga’s usual wild man act before hand.

To be sure, it’s been four years since Mayorga last fought at welterweight, an occasion in which he lost his WBC/WBA/IBF welterweight title to Cory Spinks by majority decision. For some reason, instead of attempting to get a rematch with Spinks, Mayorga instead moved up to the middleweight division where he was soon after stopped in the 8th round by Felix Trinidad, who was making a comeback, in October 2004.

However, to think of moving back down to 147 at this late stage in Mayorga’s career, I think, seems a little odd, like he’s not really thinking it through clearly. Most of the top welterweights, aside from Cotto and Mayweather, would likely take Mayorga’s head off. Fighters like Paul Williams, Anotnio Margarito and Kermit Cintron, who not punch hard but also throw a lot of punches. If Mayorga thought it was bad against De La Hoya, wait until he gets in the ring with one of those fighers.

The problem for Mayorga, though, is that these fighters are no more likely to fight him than Mayweather and Cotto. They’re not going to waste their time fighting him, because why should they? He’s not ranked high in the welterweight division and he’s not popular, hence he will likely be ignored.

Most likely, I see Mayorga being used as a trail horse for up and coming welterweights like Andre Berto, Alfonso Gomez and Joshua Clottey. He would be considered a non-threatening opponent to most of them, one whom they could look good against. However, it wouldn’t be serving any use to Mayorga, who really should consider moving down to the junior middleweight division (154 lbs), where there less skilled fighters.