Clottey, Foreman & Vazquez-Zappavigna could be fighting on Cotto vs. Mayorga undercard

By Boxing News - 01/08/2011 - Comments

Image: Clottey, Foreman & Vazquez-Zappavigna could be fighting on Cotto vs. Mayorga undercardBy Chris Williams: The undercard of the WBA junior middleweight fight between champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) and challenger Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) could end up with a lot of halfway decent fights for the March 12th bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Joshua Clottey, the former IBF welterweight champion and recent victim of Manny Pacquiao, could be fighting on the card.

Besides that, former WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman could be seeing action in a fight against contender Pawel Wolak. And, last but not least, IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez (27-3, 12 KO’s) could be facing #1 challenger Leonardo Zappavigna (25-0, 17 KO’s) in what could be a much better fight than the main event by far.

Clottey, 33, hasn’t fought since losing a 12 round decision to Pacquiao in March of last year. Apparently, Clottey is only interested in taking big fights for big money but has found no takers interested in fighting him for big money. The problem for Clottey is that he looked dreadful against Pacquiao in losing and didn’t seem to put much of an effort into trying to win the fight.

Clottey also isn’t helped that he lost his fight before that to Cotto in a 12 round split decision. As such, Clottey has a two fight losing streak and never was a marketable fighter to begin with. It seems only natural that there’s not big stars beating on his door to try and get a fight with him. He’s good for a few rounds of action but then he tends to go into his cocoon and just hang on the ropes covering up.

Foreman also lost his last fight, losing by a 9th round TKO to Cotto in June. Foreman looked decent until his leg gave out on him in the 7th. He’s never been interesting to watch, however, due to his hit and run style of fighting. If they put him in with Wolak, it should be a nice easy fight for Foreman as long as his leg holds up. Hopefully this fight doesn’t end up on television because it’s not interesting to see Foreman run around the ring, and Wolak is infinitely beatable.

The only fight I can see that’s really interesting on the card is the Zappavigna vs. Vazquez fight, if it does get added to the card. It’s all talk at this point whether this fight will make it on the card. Hopefully it does because this could be a fight card filled with notable fighters in mismatches. Vazquez beat Breidis Prescott by a 10 round split decision in July 2009, and last year, Vazquez defeated contender Ji-Hoon Kim by a 12 round decision, dominating him in the process in August.



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