By Chris Williams: Strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza, who works for both Manny Pacquiao and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., thinks that the 24-year-old Chavez Jr. can beat WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto when they fight on December 4th. In an article by Chris Robinson at Examiner.com, Ariza says “Freddie [Roach] already knows how to beat Cotto. It’s really a good fight, especially for a guy like Chavez who is young, and like to challenge himself. I think having an eight week camp instead of four weeks, which is what we had to get ready for [ohn] Duddy, is going to be a big difference. I think the main thing will be that Freddie knows how to beat Cotto and Chavez is going to be too big and too strong.”

I don’t think Roach stumbled onto anything really brilliant in formulating a plan to beat Cotto. That didn’t take much imagination if you ask me. All Roach had to do was to watch the video of Antonio Margarito pressuring and beating up Cotto in his 11th round TKO win in 2008 to see how to beat Cotto. Heck, even Joshua Clottey was on his way to beating Cotto in the fight prior to Pacquiao’s fight with Cotto. Roach had to have seen that fight. Cotto looked like crap, and almost seemed like he was ready to quit at one point. It didn’t take much imagination to come up with a plan to beat Cotto after seeing those two fights, don’t you think?

And beating Cotto after the loss to Margarito and the near loss to Clottey, doesn’t exactly make Pacquiao’s win over Cotto seem all that impressive. It makes me wonder why Cotto was selected in the first place rather than someone who was actually winning and looking good like Shane Mosley, Andre Berto or Paul Williams. I don’t know if Chavez’s superior size will be much help to him against Cotto. Although I think Cotto isn’t the same fighter he once was before the Margarito loss, I still think he’s going to beat the stuffing out of the bigger Chavez. Being bigger in this case doesn’t translate into being a better fighter. Yuri Foreman, 5’11”, was roughly the same size as Chavez, and yet he lost to Cotto in June. I don’t think much of Foreman as a figher, but I do think he’s better than Chavez if Yuri has both of his legs working for him.

Ariza thinks that Chavez can copy Margarito’s style and beat Cotto using it. Ariza says “He can emulate that same kind of style that Margarito has.” I don’t see Chavez as being as good as Margarito. He may be able to ape him, but Chavez is not Margarito and I don’t care if he copies him, Cotto is going to have his number and will still tear Chavez Jr. to pieces on December 4th, regardless of Roach’s best plans and Ariza’s training strategies.