Cotto could get rematch with Pacquiao if he defeats Mayorga, Margarito and Chavez Jr.

By Boxing News - 01/21/2011 - Comments

Image: Cotto could get rematch with Pacquiao if he defeats Mayorga, Margarito and Chavez Jr.By Chris Williams: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto will have to earn his second chance to face Manny Pacquiao. Before Bob Arum allows Cotto to get a second bite at the Pacquiao apple, Cotto is going to have to go through a series of fights first against Richard Mayorga on March 12th, Antonio Margarito in the Summer and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. likely after that, and hope to come out of them unscathed so that he can get another huge money fight with boxing’s number #1 cash cow Pacquiao.

It’s not going to be easy for Cotto to win even one of those fights, as bad as he’s been looking in the last couple of years. I suspect Cotto will get by the 37-year-old Mayorga on 3/12, but it’s going to be a fight in which Cotto is going to almost surely take a great deal of punishment en route to getting the win. At 5’7″, Cotto is a miniature junior middleweight, small even for a welterweight. Mayorga is likely going to have 10 to 15 pound weight advantage over Cotto and with his punching power still very much present, Mayorga will inflict a lot of punishment on Cotto unless he can get Mayorga out of there quickly without getting hit too much.

I don’t think Cotto will be able to take out a fighter like Mayorga quickly. He’s going to get hammered a little in the process of winning. The Margarito fight will be much worse than that for Cotto, because Margarito seemed to really have Cotto’s number the last time they fought. Cotto had to run just to survive into the 10th round of that fight, and that’s when he ran out of gas and got hurt. I don’t see Chavez as being a problem for Cotto, because Chavez is more of a media creation in my view.

But Chavez will get the benefit of facing Cotto after he’s fought two wars with Mayorga and Margarito. Cotto will likely be badly deteriorated when he emerges from those fights. Chavez could then make things interesting for awhile before Cotto chops him down. By the time Cotto gets through all these fights, he’s going to be like a plate of chopped liver for Pacquiao to fight. I can’t see Cotto last more than a couple of rounds against Pacquiao at that point. He’ll be too badly depleted.



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