By Dave Lahr: Welterweight Joshua Clottey is unhappy with his 12 round split decision loss to Miguel Cotto last Saturday night and wants a rematch with him. Clottey, 32, appeared to have done enough to edge the 28-year-old WBO welterweight champion Cotto, landing more punches and the harder shots than Cotto. However, it doesn’t look as if Cotto is going to bother himself with giving Clottey a rematch, because as I write this plans are underway for a potential bout between Cotto and Manny Pacquiao in November.
Clottey will have to be satisfied that he came close to beating Cotto, because that will likely be Clottey’s first and last chance at fighting Cotto. Clottey has a lot to be proud of. Aside from a flash knockdown that occurred at the end of the 1st when Clottey was knocked down by a jab that he didn’t see coming as he was charging forward, most of the rounds looked to have been won by the harder-punching Clottey.
The bout could have been different had Cotto not been cut over his left eye in the 3rd round from a head butt. After the cut, Cotto spent most of the remaining rounds on a constant move, circling around the ring and trying to avoid getting hit on his badly cut eye.
The movement made it hard to score the rounds because Clottey was clearly landing the harder shots and with a slightly better volume than Cotto. However, Clottey would sometimes stop punching and would allow Cotto to come in and land flurries of shots to impress the judges.
Clottey already had it hard enough in that Cotto had most of the fans on his side at Madison Square Garden, in New York. The fans were ready to cheer loudly for Cotto no matter what he did in the fight. This meant that a lot of the punches that Clottey landed in the fight didn’t have the screaming that seems to impress the more impressionable judges who might have been more receptive to this kind of thing.
Clottey nailed Cotto with a lot of right hands after the 3rd round and seemed to be able to hit him at will without Cotto being able to block the shots. On the flipside, Clottey was blocking most of Cotto’s shots on the arms and gloves and only a small percentage seemed to be getting through his guard.
Clottey will have to look in another direction for his next opponent. Cotto is intent on going after a big money fight against Pacquiao and in the future Cotto would like to have fights against Shane Mosley and Antonio Margarito. There’s also a possibility of fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. at some point in the future.
However, that would seem like a remote chance because Mayweather Jr. has never seemed to be too eager at fighting Cotto. Clottey might be better off trying to go after World Boxing Council welterweight champion Andre Berto, whom has looked very beatable in his last two fights.
Clottey isn’t ranked in the top 15 in the WBC, though, and it’s doubtful that Berto would want to take a risk of fighting a dangerous puncher like Clottey unless he absolutely had to.
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