By Dan Ambrose: Win or lose his next fight against Ricardo Mayorga on March 12th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto is likely going to be facing Antonio Margarito in a rematch during the summer. It’s going to be the strangest thing with Cotto coming off a loss or a terrible beating at the hands of Mayorga and still facing Margarito. But I see Cotto and Margarito’s promoter Bob Arum going ahead with their June fight, knowing that the casual fans probably won’t have a clue that Cotto was pounded on by Mayorga.
That’s the beauty of the casual fan. A promoter can push fights in front of them with fighters that have had the stuffing beaten out of them in their last fights, and yet the casual boxing fan will still purchase it as long as it’s marketed well. I think Cotto is no longer the same fighter he once was in 2008 before his loss to Margarito, and is now what you would call a paper champion. Arum matched Cotto wisely in his last fight by putting him in with one of his Top Rank fighters, the weak punching Yuri Foreman.
Against Foreman, who has no pop, Cotto was able to take his shots and get a win after Foreman’s leg gave out on him and was left in a limping state in the 7th until the bitter end in the 9th. Mayorga is up there in age at 37, but he still punches really hard and throws mean looking looping shots that would give most fighters all kinds of problems. Cotto has taken way too much punishment in the last three years and now looks like a shell shocked fighter only capable of beating weak punchers like Foreman.
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