By Jason Kim: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) has been matched against a still semi-live Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) on March 12th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cotto is coming off a shoulder surgery, and his promoter Bob Arum still wanted to make his fight a pay-per-view bout to bring in good money for Cotto and company.

Normally, you would want to get an extra soft touch for a guy that’s rusty and coming off a surgery, but it looks like Arum is willing to risk Cotto being able to deal with Mayorga and not taking punishment or worse – getting beat. Arum has big plans for Cotto, his #2 cash cow in 2011. Arum wants to match Cotto in a rematch Antonio Margarito in June.

That’s the first big fight of the year, and if things go alright, we could be seeing Cotto in a rematch with Manny Pacquiao late in the year. However, Mayorga could throw a wrench in the works by taking Cotto out and upsetting the applecart by ruining the Cotto-Margarito rematch plans. Arum will probably put Cotto back in with Margarito no matter what happens in the Cotto-Mayorga fight, it’s just that it would look a lot less silly if Cotto at least beats Mayorga instead of getting beaten and still ending up in the ring with Margarito.

It’s certainly a very real possibility that Mayorga can beat Cotto. All Mayorga has to do is go all out for five or six rounds as hard as he can and the chances are high that Cotto will fall apart under the strain. His skin is riddled with scar tissue, and his face has a tendency to swell up to grotesque proportions very quickly when he gets hit regularly for five or six rounds. If Mayorga can pound on Cotto enough, he could get him looking frightful, and make him start doubting himself and we could have an upset by Mayorga.