By Dan Ambrose: Sporting nearly identical records, former WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) will be looking to redeem himself somewhat in a fight against Michael Jennings (34-1, 16 KOs) for the vacant WBO welterweight title on February 21st at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Few experts see Jennings, 31, as having much of a chance against the former champion Cotto, pointing out Jennings’s limited opposition which has been exclusively European during his nine year professional boxing career.
However, Jennings, a former BBBofC British welterweight champion, has the perfect style to give Cotto a lot of trouble, mainly because Jennings prefers to box at a distance using his excellent jab, combinations and an airtight defense to defeat his opponents. In comparison to Antonio Margarito, who recently stopped Cotto in a 11th round stoppage in July, Jennings is the complete opposite type of fighter.
Instead of coming after his opponent, he prefers to circle the ring and pick off fighters with jabs. Cotto has shown to have problems against these types of fighters, struggling in his fight with Oktay Urkal in March 2007. Cotto would eventually win by an 11th round TKO, but he looked bad throughout the fight, getting nailed often with jabs from Urkal and losing his cool late in the fight and resulting in roughhouse tactics when Urkal refused to fold under his pressure.
Jennings doesn’t try to trade power shots with his opponents, and it’s going to more of a tactical fight. This isn’t a good thing for Cotto, because he’s become accustomed to opponents that either come right at him or stand and trade with him. In facing Jennings, Cotto is going to be facing a pure boxer, maybe the most technical sound fighter that he’s faced in his career. That’s not good news for Cotto, because he needs an easy fighter that he can track down and take out quickly in order to look good against. The last thing he needs is a fighter with good boxing ability that can drag the fight out and make him look less than excellent.
Sure, Cotto has already defeated excellent fighters like Zab Judah and Shane Mosley, but both of them fought strategically poor fights, choosing to try and match Cotto punch for punch. As hard as Cotto hits, that was a foolhardy move for Mosley and Judah to do, because neither had the power to compete with Cotto at close range and win.
Judah ended up taking a severe beating, eventually retiring in the 11th round, whereas Mosley lost most of the rounds in the early going, but was too far behind to make up the difference in the second half of the bout. With Jennings, however, he’s going to stay on the outside, moving constantly and preventing Cotto from having a stationary target to get his harder shots in.
This is an especially important fight for Cotto, mainly because he’s coming off of a devastating 11th round TKO from Margarito in July, a fight which left Cotto a beaten and bloody mess. He did a commendable job for all of nine rounds, fighting on the move and landing often. He dominated the first nine rounds and going into the 10th, it looked as if Cotto was well on his way to earning an easy decision.
However, after using his legs to move around the ring for nine rounds, he simply ran out of gas in the 10th, stopping for a moment too long by the ropes and getting hit with a flurry of punches from Margarito, hurting Cotto badly. In the 11th round, unable to run from Margarito anymore, Cotto was forced to stand his ground and try to fight it out with him.
By then, however, Cotto was too exhausted and hurt from the previous round and was battered to the canvas with a series of short, chopping shots from Margarito which caused Cotto to take a knee. Shortly after that, Cotto took a second knee without being hit, and the fight was promptly stopped.
Given the severity of the punishment that Cotto took in the last two rounds, it was expected that he would take on an easier opponent for his next fight, hence the call for a bout against the 31-year-old Jennings.
However, despite Jennings lack of experience against world class opposition, he has the style to beat Cotto if he can avoid being pulled into a war. He won’t last more than a couple of rounds if Cotto and can force him to fight, but if he can stick to boxing and moving, Jennings may open some eyes and end up beating Cotto.
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