By Manuel Perez: So much for winning the old fashioned way by beating up and outsmarting your opponent. Freddie Roach, the trainer for Manny Pacquiao, is counting on Miguel Cotto getting cut up by Manny Pacquiao on November 14th, in order for Pacquiao to get an advantage. “He [Cotto] has started to cut lately and I’m hoping that will be a factor for us. Manny’s speed will bust him up a little bit, I hope,” Roach said to David Tyler in an article from Doghouse Boxing.
Wow! What Roach is saying hardly sounds like a sportsmanlike thing to wish for. Roach is actually hoping that Cotto gets cut so that Pacquiao can get an unfair advantage from it? How screwed up is that? Isn’t Pacquiao good enough to beat Cotto fair and square without Miguel being handicapped by a severe cut?
Goodness knows, Pacquiao already has several handicaps going for him in this fight with the catch weight of 145 instead of the normal 147 for the welterweight division, ring size of 20 feet instead of 18 feet, location of the fight and the much bigger purse. Isn’t that enough?
It’s bad enough that poor Cotto is going to probably come into this fight weight drained and weaker than he usually is because of the catch weight. Now, Roach is hoping that Cotto gets cut so that Pacquiao can get an extra edge because of that? I may have missed something, but isn’t Pacquiao supposed to be the number #1 pound for pound fighter in all of boxing?
Why pray tell does he need his opponents to be cut for him to win? Can’t he beat Cotto without him being cut? That is so pathetic. How can Pacquiao claim victory afterwards if he wins a fight that is tainted by a cut? How could stand himself if he gets a win under those circumstances? I would feel the same way if it were Pacquiao, believe me.
I’m hoping that Cotto can beat Pacquiao without the need for Manny to be cut, or otherwise hurt for Cotto to get a handicap big enough for him to win. If Cotto can’t beat Pacquiao without an extra advantage, then he doesn’t deserve to get the win, period. The same goes for Pacquiao.
He can’t be counting on winning because of cuts, because all that will do is diminish the fight in the eyes of the fans, which will see it for what it is – a win over a fighter who was blinded by blood. As it is, Cotto really needs more time for his badly cut left eye to heal more.
Cotto was cut badly in his fight against Joshua Clottey in June, and there’s no way that the cut will be properly healed by fight time in November. More than likely, the cut will reopen once Cotto gets hit a few times and there will be blood all over the place.
And that is really sad, because Pacquiao will have yet another advantage going for him to go along with his catch weight. But for Roach to actually wish for Cotto to get cut so that Pacquiao to gain an advantage, that’s really off putting.
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