By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) has taken a lifetimes’ worth of punishment in fights against Antonio Margarito, Joshua Clottey, Shane Mosley and Manny Pacquiao in the last three years. And the accumulation of shots that Cotto has absorbed has really taken its toll on him, making more vulnerable to getting hurt and stopped than ever was before.

Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum wants to get him in rematches against Pacquiao and Margarito, but has made the mistake of putting him in with the tough Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) in Cotto’s next fight on March 12th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I think this move, made to capitalize on pay-per-view sales, will ultimately be a bad one when Mayorga takes Cotto apart and puts a real hurting on him. Mayorga is still about the same fighter that gave Mosley fits in September 2008. I had Mayorga winning the fight until being stopped in the last second of the 12th. He fought very well against a still prime Mosley.

Unfortunately for Mosley, he hasn’t aged as well as Mayorga has, because he now looks shot. However, Mayorga is still fighting well and looks to be about the same fighter he was in the Mosley fight. That’s bad news for Cotto, because he’s not the same fighter that defeated Mosley back in 2007 by a narrow 12 round decision. Cotto had deteriorated to the point where he can be beaten by almost any given fighter in the top 10 in the junior middleweight division.

Putting Cotto in with Mayorga really isn’t all that fair to Cotto, because he really hasn’t faced a legitimate junior middleweight with power. Cotto picked up the WBA strap by beating Arum’s stable fighter Yuri Foreman in June. Foreman is like a heavy welterweight with zero power. He doesn’t punch at the junior middleweight level, and it made things easy for Cotto.

Mayorga can punch his weight, and that’s not a good thing for Cotto, because he was torn apart by lighter punchers than Mayorga in his losses to Pacquiao and Margarito. Mayorga is going to have a field day on Cotto, and rip his face apart before long. I see Cotto getting beaten in a bloody fight with all the blood coming from him.