By Dave Lahr: WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (34-1, 27 KO’s) defeated Joshua Clottey (35-3, 20 KO’s) by a controversial 12-round split decision last Saturday night, and looked pretty average in the process. If it was only a case of Cotto looking mediocre I wouldn’t be so concerned, but it was the way that Cotto was acting from the 6th round on that bothered me.
Specifically, Cotto looked to be having problems by the big shots that he was getting hit with by Clottey and Miguel was responding by running around the ring in the same manner that he did in his loss to Antonio Margarito last July.
Cotto, 28, took some god awful punishment against Margarito and seemed to take a lot of head shots from Clottey on Saturday night. The way that Cotto looked and the close margin in which Miguel was able to ultimately prevail leaves me wondering whether Cotto has too many more big fights left in him.
Like Ricky Hatton, Cotto tends to take a lot of punishment in his fights because of his short height, brawling style of fighting and his tendency to try and throw a lot of body shots. His style of fighting is exciting for the most part, but it also forces him to take a lot of hard shots to the head.
In Cotto’s fights against Margarito and Clottey, he tried to move a lot to avoid getting hit. It worked somewhat but not nearly enough for Cotto to avoid getting hit with a lot of monstrous right hands in both fights. Some fighters can take big shots and not show any signs of wear, but in Cotto’s case he seems to have degraded a few percentage points since the Margarito loss.
It might not be a big deal if Cotto were to continue fighting opponent like Britain’s Michael Jennings, but that’s not who Cotto will be fighting next. Cotto appears to be going after Manny Pacquiao in November at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. If Cotto looks and fights the same way he did against Margarito and Clottey then I see Cotto getting knocked out once again.
He barely beat Clottey on the judges scores from Saturday night, winning 116-111, 115-112 and with the last judge giving it to Clottey 114-113. I scored the fight as a close win for Clottey, who appeared to have done enough to get the win. The result of the fight is less important to me then the change in Cotto’s abilities.
I never thought Clottey would have a chance at beating a popular fighter like Cotto if the fight were close like this because the judges would naturally side with Cotto, the more popular fighter, if the bout were even slightly close. But what concerns me is how badly Cotto seems to have degraded since the Margarito fight.
Cotto just doesn’t seem like the same fighter he was prior to that fight. I don’t think it’s a question of confidence either. He just physically seems to be a different fighter. It couldn’t be happening at a worse time for Cotto, because with a huge fight with the dangerous Pacquiao looming ahead of him in five months, Cotto will be in with a fighter that he doesn’t appear to be ready for at this point.
It probably won’t get any better for Cotto in the future once the Pacquiao fight is done with. After that fight, Cotto will likely be facing rematches with Margarito and Shane Mosley, and will be in big trouble when those two fights come around. I don’t believe that Margarito loaded his gloves for his bout with Cotto. He just had a chin good enough to take Cotto’s shots and applied the pressure needed to beat him late in the fight unlike Clottey, who wasn’t letting his hands go enough in rounds ten through twelve.
I think Margarito will destroy Cotto even easier in a rematch and I think Mosley will beat him rather easily too. After Cotto gets through his next three fights with Pacquiao, Margarito and Mosley, I think it will be academic at that point that Cotto is a shot fighter. Right now some boxing fans and experts suspect that Cotto has seen his best days, but they’re not quite clear because he was still able to beat Clottey by a narrow decision.
However, from what I can see of Cotto, he’s clearly not the same fighter he was last year and is showing serious signs of wear. By the time that Cotto finishes with fighting Mosley, Pacquiao and Margarito, other people will see what I can see already and will come to agree with me that Cotto might be better served to hang up his gloves and retire from boxing.
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