Can Cintron Beat Cotto?

By Boxing News - 02/18/2009 - Comments

cintron55352By Eric Thomas: With former IBF welterweight champion Kermit Cintron (30-2-1, 27 KOs) looking more and more like Miguel Cotto’s opponent for June, if Cotto defeats Michael Jennings this Saturday night for the vacant WBO welterweight title, it potentially sets up an exciting fight between two hard hitting punchers known for their knockout power. The question here is whether Cintron, 29, has enough left in the tank to defeat a quality fighter like Cotto.

If you were to have seen Cintron’s poor performance against interim WBC light middleweight champion Sergio Martinez last Saturday night, a 12-round majority draw, then many boxing fans might conclude that Cintron has little chance of beating Cotto.

It isn’t that Cintron doesn’t have the power to defeat Cotto, because he showed that his big power is still pretty much intact. But, the main problems for Cintron would seem to be his lack of aggression, his weak chin, and his poor work rate. The aggression issue seems to be fallout from his 6th round TKO loss to Antonio Margarito in April 2008.

Cintron fought passively through much of the fight, failing to let his hands go and fight as hard as he had in their first fight, also a loss for Cintron, in April 2005. In that bout, Cintron went after Margarito early and hurt him with a big right hand at one point, but Cintron wasn’t able to keep it up and was quickly taken out in the 5th round.

In fights that followed, most notably against Jesse Feliciano and David Estrada, Cintron looked timid at times and wasn’t the same fearless looking fighter he had been prior to his loss to Margarito.

Cotto has recently had to deal with a loss as well, getting stopped by Margarito in the 11th round in July 2008. We’ll see this Saturday how effected Cotto was by his loss to Margarito, and whether Miguel is the same fighter he was before the loss. At even 75% of what he was, Cotto might prove to be too tough for Cintron to deal with.

Cintron was hurt badly in the 7th round by Martinez, walking straight into a hard left hand from the Spaniard. Cintron went down hard, staying down until the referee had counted to 10 before getting up. However, Cintron was able to get a second chance after telling the referee that the knockdown had occurred from a head butt and not a punch.

Cintron stayed in the fight and looked cautious and gun shy for the remainder of the bout, unable to pull the trigger with his shots. Getting a draw, normally something that fighters hate to get, actually was a gift for Cintron, because in avoiding what appeared to be a clear knockout and then being given another gift when the referee took a point away from Martinez in the 12th for hitting on the back of the head, it saved Cintron from getting another loss on his record.

Loss or not, the fact that Cintron was hurt so badly by a left hand from the normally weak-punching Martinez isn’t a good sign for the future. If Cotto does fight him, you can better believe that Cintron will be getting hit with even harder punches, a lot of them, throughout the fight and it’s difficult to imagine that Cintron will be able to stand up to them for long.



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