By Nate Anderson: In a bit of good news, Setanta has reportedly reached a deal with Sports Network to allow them the rights to show Saturday night’s WBO welterweight title match between Miguel Cotto and Michael Jennings. The fight will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York, and there had been talk of the fight not being shown by Setanta due to difficulties working out a deal with the Sports Network.
However, the deal has been made and the fight will now be shown live on Setanta Sports on Saturday, February 21st. Jennings (34-1, 16 KOs), a huge 13-1 underdog in the fight, matches his boxing skills up against the big power of the 28-year-old Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) in a battle for the vacant WBO welterweight title.
Cotto was defeated by Antonio Margarito by an 11th round TKO in July, and comes into this fight with a lot of questions about his chin after his grueling battle. Jennings, 31, has faced nothing in his career comparable to a fighter in the class of Cotto, and as such, he is expected to have big difficulties due to the step up in class.
However, with Cotto coming into the fight having been beaten so badly in his last fight against Margarito, and Jennings have such good boxing ability, there’s a window of opportunity there for Jennings to score an upset if he can take Cotto deep, wear him out and win many of the later rounds. Few people think that Jennings, a weak puncher, can knock Cotto out.
Even though Miguel took a major pounding in his last fight, Jennings just doesn’t have the kind of knockout power that would likely trouble Cotto. But what Jennings does have is skills, stamina and knowledge of the sport, and he can possibly take advantage of Cotto’s sometimes poor stamina in the later rounds of his fights.
Cotto struggled against another Jennings-type fighter in Oktay Urkal in March 2007, beating him by an 11th round stoppage after Urkal’s corner stopped the fight out of protest for a point deduction that was taken from him for holding. Urkal gave Cotto a lot of problems with his jab and by staying on the outside.
When the two fighters were close, Urkal would punch and grab, using the style common for fighters like Ricky Hatton, John Ruiz and Bernard Hopkins. This seemed to anger and frustrate Cotto, who roughly bulled Urkal around the ring in the later rounds, at one point picking him off the ground and then letting him drop over his shoulder.
Cotto ended up winning, but tired out badly in the 2nd half of the fight and looked unimpressive. If Jennings can use the blue print that Urkal set for him, he may have a decent chance of defeating Cotto. He’s got to stay away from exchanges from Cotto, though, because he doesn’t have the power to mix it up with Cotto at close range for long. Above all, he needs to use his jab and keep it in the face of Cotto as much as possible to get the win.
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