By Chris Williams: Although former World Boxing Association welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) might much prefer to go right into a title fight against WBO champion Paul Williams, unfortunately Cotto will have to take a brief detour along the way with a WBO title eliminator match against #2 ranked Michael Jennings (34-1, 16 KOs) on February 14th in New York. Jennings, 31, from Britain, has fought the entirety of his career in the UK against mostly obscure, lowly ranked fighters.
In terms of actual talent, Jennings probably deserves to be ranked more in the top 30 or 40 rather than in the top three in the WBO, and will probably be way in over his head against Cotto when they meet up. For Cotto, 28, who’s coming off a brutal 11th round TKO loss to Antonio Margarito in July, he probably is better off taking on a more mediocre fighter like Jennings rather than stepping back into the fire against someone as good as Williams.
Indeed, Williams is essentially a taller, stronger, equally active version of Antonio Margarito and would probably give Cotto huge problems when and if they ever meet. At least in facing Jennings before hand, it will give Cotto a little more time to recover from the beating to Margarito, as well as a fight that will likely give him a little confidence boost.
Jennings has little power to speak of, and usually tends to circle the ring, jabbing from the distance and throwing occasional right hands and combinations. He’s not fast with his hands and he uses his foot movement to work in the place of his defense.
But mostly he’s fought softer opponents and has built up his record on them alone rather than tough top 10 fighters. In his last fight on November 14th, Jennings won a dull decision over Jason Rushton, showing poor defense, little power and average boxing skills against Rushton. Cotto would have likely taken Rushton out in the first two rounds without any problems, yet Jennings struggled mightily with him for the entirety of the eight-round bout.
Cotto, I imagine, wants to recapture a portion of the welterweight titles as soon as possible, but it seems as if he’s going about it the wrong way. Instead of going after the dangerous Williams, who at 6’2” would present big problems for the much smaller 5’7” Cotto, he would be better served to seek out Andre Berto, the World Boxing Council welterweight champion, or short of that, try and fight Joshua Clottey, the IBF champion.
Both of them are much smaller than Williams, throw far less punches per round and are far less dangerous than him in terms of power and pressure. Cotto might be good enough to beat one or both of them on a good day, but not against Williams, who will overwhelm him with punches much in the same way that Margarito did in their July bout.
Cotto fought well against Margarito for the first nine rounds, hitting and running and staying out of range of Margarito’s nonstop punches. However, in the 10th round, Margarito caught up with Cotto and hurt him near the end of the round with a series of combinations while Cotto was trapped up against the ropes.
In the 11th, Margarito once again caught up to Cotto against the ropes and tagged him with a flurry of uppercuts and hooks to the head, hurting Cotto and causing him to take a knee. After getting up, Cotto scurried across the ring and quickly took another knee as he saw Margarito rapidly running towards him to try and finish him off.
The referee stepped in at that point and halted the fight, as Cotto’s face was bleeding badly from cuts around his eyes and he didn’t appear to have enough left to survive the round.
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