By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) is going into his March 12th fight against the tough Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) with a one-fight winning steak after having beaten the WBA paper champion Yuri Foreman last year in June to capture the World Boxing Association title.

Before beating Foreman, many boxing fans felt that Cotto wasn’t the same fighter he once was, and that he was showing signs of being a shot fighter. It’s hard to argue with that belief because Cotto barely beat the limited Joshua Clottey in 2009 and seemed ready to quit in that fight when Clottey was taking the fight to Cotto in the 9th.

Cotto was lucky in that fight because Clottey went back into his hibernation mode in the 10th and that allowed Cotto to win the fight. Cotto then took a pounding in his next fight against Manny Pacquiao in November 2009, and was stopped in the 12th round. Cotto was never even remotely competitive in that fight. It was like watching an old shot fighter stumble around the ring and taking shots. But Cotto’s promoter fixed things up for him in his last fight by putting him in with Foreman, who only had one good leg to fight on and the bad one gave out on him just when he was teeing off on Cotto and giving him all he could handle.

I’m afraid that Cotto is really nothing like he once was and I see him in the same boat more or less as Mayorga. I don’t think Cotto is better than Mayorga, and I see this as a real toss-up fight. If Mayorga comes in shape for this fight and doesn’t look fat like he did in his last fight against Michael Walker, I see him stopping Cotto and giving him a real beating. It’s going to be sad to see Cotto get whipped, but that’s how things go when you’ve taken as many bad beatings as Cotto has.