By Dan Ambrose: In choosing former two division world champion Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) to face his fighter WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) on March 12th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Bob Arum has found an opponent with a name to attract pay-per-view buys for this fight. Arum wants this to be a PPV bout despite Cotto coming off surgery and nine months of inactivity.

This is a fight that should be a match-up between Cotto and some scrub opponent to make sure that Cotto doesn’t get batted around and pushed to hard, but Arum is willing to take that risk by matching Cotto against a still somewhat alive Mayorga. It’s a gamble. Cotto looks totally vulnerable at this point in his career, and has taken major beatings in three out of his last five fights. Even in his win over Yuri Foreman – a fighter that came into the ring with an injury – in June, Cotto was taking some huge shots that were connecting cleanly from a weak puncher. Luckily for Cotto, Foreman’s leg gave out on him in the 7th otherwise we could be talking about Foreman vs. Mayorga instead of Cotto.

The conventional wisdom is that Mayorga can only fight hard for two or three rounds before gassing out, and for that reason he’ll only be dangerous for the first quarter of the fight. Emanuel Steward, Cotto’s trainer, admitted that was what he sees happening on March 12th. But I’m not so sure about that. I saw Mayorga’s fight against Michael Walker in December, and Mayorga was still looking strong after the first few rounds. He may have slowed down a little, but he kept attacking in short bursts where he would land three to six punches consecutively and these were hard looping shots, the type that would cause a scarred up Cotto to start bleeding badly.

Mayorga still looked strong in the 8th and 9th rounds. I think if Mayorga can fight hard for a minimum of eight rounds, he’ll have Cotto so busted up and shell shocked that he’ll score a stoppage. Cotto has taken too many bad beatings and if you press him hard for a certain period of time, he breaks. I see that happening with Mayorga if his stamina can hold out that long. From what I saw of him in the Walker fight, I think Mayorga is more than good enough to bust up and stop Cotto.