Miguel Cotto = Fernando Vargas?

By Boxing News - 08/05/2008 - Comments

cotto576368.jpgBy Tom Hanson: I’m not sure if I’m the only one that noticed this or not, but I couldn’t help but see the close similarities of Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) and former welterweight star Fernando Vargas earlier in his career. I’m not referring to the fat and bloated Vargas at the end of his boxing career when he was struggling badly to make weight for fights. I’m talking about when Vargas was at the top of his game, the young undefeated then 20-0 phenom that fought Felix Trinidad in December 2000. At the time, Vargas was just as good a fighter as Cotto, maybe even better since he had already proven himself with wins over Winky Wright, Ike Quartey, Raul Marquez, Ross Thompson and a young Yory Boy Campas.

In contrast, before losing in a crushing 10th stoppage to Margarito on July 26th, Cotto has struggled to defeat Shane Mosley, running in the last three rounds to eke out a win, and also had problems in defeating Zab Judah, DeMarcus Corley and Ricardo Torres. Vargas, for his part, had no problems beating all of his opponents up until his fight with Trinidad in 2000, and showed superb speed, boxing ability and power to go with his good size at 5’10”. If you were to want to put together a welterweight champion, Vargas would be the mold that you would be looking for. He could move, slug and had excellent hand speed. Indeed, in every facet of his game he was a superior fighter than Cotto has shown to be.

However, all that changed on the night that he faced Trinidad on December 2nd 2000. In the 1st round, Vargas was dropped twice by Trinidad, who had him badly hurt and on the verge of a knockout. However, Vargas came back later in the fight to knock Trinidad down in the 4th round. Just when it looked as if Vargas was going to end matters, Trinidad tagged him with a shot below the border, which enabled Trinidad to recover and escape without being knocked out.

Both fighters traded huge shots for the remainder of the fight until Vargas, much like Cotto did against Margarito, ran out of gas in the 12th round and ended up being stopped. The fight seemed to change Vargas, softening him up for Oscar De La Hoya, who took him out two years later in the 11th round in September 2002.

In Cotto’s case, he took an equally bad beating from Margarito, perhaps even a little worse, and was shown to be very vulnerable when pressured hard. I personally don’t think he’ll ever be the same fighter that he was going into the fight with Margarito, as he had something taken out of him on that night. Like Vargas, I think he’s going to have problems against fighters that can punch and can apply a lot of pressure against, and I see him losing badly when he finally does take on another good welterweight fighter.

Cotto will probably try and forestall that happening by avoiding any real tough fighters for the time being, but the boxing public will eventually push him into a fight against someone like Paul Williams or Andre Berto, and when that happens, we’ll likely be seeing a duplicate version of Vargas vs. De La Hoya, with Cotto getting taken out late in the fight like Vargas was. Cotto can put this off for as long as he wants, but I think he’s heading for the Vargas type end of his career, although, as I said before, not quite as good as Vargas in doing do.



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