By Richard Rodriguez: As much as I enjoyed watching last Saturday’s fight between World Boxing Association welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (31-0, 25 KOs) and Shane Mosley, I couldn’t help wonder how much longer Cotto will be able to hold onto his title. Unlike the legions of Cotto sycophants, I see him as a remake of Arturo Gatti, except with good skin that tear easily. Cotto has taken a pounding in almost all of his bouts in the past couple of years and has been lucky not to have been knocked out in some of them. He’s really taken a ton of head shots in all of his most recent bouts, and I wonder how much longer he can continue on without losing to someone.
Mosley had him on the brink of losing, and if not for a couple of rounds that could have gone either way, he’d already have lost his title. However, ahead of him, I see the road getting much tougher, especially if he takes on the likes of Paul Williams, Antonio Margarito or Kermit Cintron. The main problem, unfortunately, is that Cotto doesn’t have the type of high volume offense that Margarito or Williams has. For that matter, nor does he had the kind of one-punch knockout power like Cintron. Instead, Cotto relies on the old fashion Rocky Marciano-type of body attack, except that he doesn’t have the kind of power that “The Rock” had in each fist.
As such, Cotto has to take two or three shots to get in his one shot of his own. His jab and right hand is essentially average, and his main weapon is his left hook. In a sense, he’s a one-armed fighter with a couple of pawing weapons to go along with. As you can see, he’s going to have problems in his career unless he can grow some power soon. The problem is, he won’t. So far, Cotto has been careful with his career, avoiding the tough fighters like Margarito, Cintron and Williams, probably knowing that he can’t match-up with their high volume offense or their power. So instead, Cotto fights the lesser fighters while his hype machine builds a myth about his greatness despite the fact that he’s only faced marginal fighters up until recently.