By Jason Kim: On Saturday night, Manny Pacquiao will be taking his power and speed and matching it against the size and equal power of WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Many boxing fans are picking the slightly smaller Pacquiao to pull out the win, but a large segment of fans also think that Cotto will win the fight based on his size and experience against bigger welterweights. If this fight had taken place a little over a year ago, before Cotto was beaten badly by former IBF welterweight champion Antonio Margarito, perhaps most of the betting fans would be picking Cotto to win the fight.

Cotto was unbeaten before he met up with Margarito and considered to be one of the best fighters in all of boxing. But the loss to Margarito, which left Cotto with a face that was nearly torn apart, has changed the perceptions of fans. They no longer see Cotto as the same fighter, no longer see him as invincible and feel that he’s not nearly the same fighter he was in the past.

Cotto didn’t help his case by looking vulnerable in his last fight against Joshua Clottey in June. Cotto was cut badly over his left eye in the fight and started taking a lot of punishment in rounds eight and nine. It was during this time that Cotto’s body language looked a lot like it did in his fight against Margarito late in the bout when Cotto took a couple of knees and quit in the 11th round.

To Cotto’s credit, he stayed on his feet and fought to the end of the fight and ended up winning a close 12 round decision. However, the bout was maybe a little too close for fans who saw Clottey as a flawed fighter and didn’t like seeing Cotto struggle so badly against him.

Cotto would say later that the cut over his eye hindered his performance and prevented him from fighting as hard and as well as he’d like to have. However, Cotto looked tired in the fight and appeared to be suffering from stamina problems. Fatigue issues aren’t new to Cotto, who wore down in fights against Margarito, Shane Mosley and to some extent in the 2nd half of his fight against Oktay Urkal.

Freddie Roach, the trainer for Pacquiao, has noticed that Cotto tends to cut in fights because of a large amount of scar tissue that Cotto has over both eyes. This scar tissue may open before long against Pacquiao, especially when Pacquiao starts hitting him with big power shots early in the fight. I don’t know that Cotto will be able to fight as well if he sustains two cuts. I think one cut would slow him down a lot, but if he gets two, I can’t see Cotto being effective at all. If Pacquiao is able to land his shots all night long, it’s only a matter of time before Cotto gets cut badly at least in one spot. That alone will be a problem for Cotto, but if he gets a second cut, it’s curtains for Cotto. I hate that part of the game but it’s a cold fact of the game. The same applies for Pacquiao. He was a lot less effective in his first fight with Erik Morales after sustaining a bad cut. If he gets cut badly in a couple of spots, he’ll be in serous danger to lose the fight.