By Eric Thomas: Yesterday, at the New York press conference at Yankee stadium with Manny Pacquiao and World Boxing Association welterweight champion, Pacquiao couldn’t help throwing a few digs at Cotto, saying “He’s strong and can punch, but he’s not that fast.“ The two fighters are on a five city press tour to try and promote their November 14th fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Pacquiao, boxing’s new pound-for-pound star is trying to further increase his stature by beating one of the best welterweights in the division. Cotto, 28, isn’t considered to be the best of the welterweights, but he probably is the most popular, unless, of course, you’re counting Floyd Mayweather Jr.
However, Floyd doesn’t really fight in the welterweight division anymore and is more of a hybrid fighter who fights in multiple divisions. This is an important bout for Pacquiao, 30, because he wants to prove that his ability is real and he’s not just someone who took advantage of an old Oscar De La Hoya and what some boxing fans consider to be an overrated Ricky Hatton. Pacquiao wants to show that he can beat young fighters that are still in their prime and not have the fight end up inconclusive, like his two fights against Juan Manuel Marquez.
“The size isn’t that big of a difference, but size doesn‘t matter. We just need to see who is the best in the ring,” Pacquiao says, commented yesterday on the size differential between him and Cotto. Indeed, Pacquiao is 5’6 ½” while Cotto is only a half inch taller at 5’7”. Where the two fighters are different is their frames. Cotto looks bigger in the torso and more rugged looking than Pacquiao.
Besides the pound-for-pound title that Pacquiao will be trying to uphold against Cotto, Manny also needs to win this fight so that he can move forward to a possible fight against the September 19th bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Juan Manuel Marquez. Most people think that it will be Mayweather who emerges as the winner. For Pacquiao, he will be much better off financially if Mayweather beats Marquez, because Floyd is the much bigger star and it would result in a huge mega fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather.
If Marquez wins the fight against Mayweather, it will still be a big fight with Pacquiao and Marquez, but probably not nearly as much as a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight because Marquez isn’t well known by casual boxing fans and not the kind of star that Mayweather is. Pacquiao would likely not want to fight Marquez a third time, because Marquez appears to have Pacquiao’s number for some reason and does really well against Pacquiao’s style of fighting.
Many people, this writer included, felt that Marquez beat Pacquiao by at least two rounds in their fight in March 2008. By having Mayweather take care of Marquez, Pacquiao would be avoiding a bullet in the form of Marquez.
“Beating Pacquiao would be another step in my career, probably the biggest,” Cotto said at the press conference. “I’m going to train the hardest I’ve ever trained for Manny.” Cotto has already been training for the past month, and yet there’s still two months to go before the fight. Hopefully, Cotto doesn’t over-train like De La Hoya did in his fight with Pacquiao.
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