By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 38 KO’s) has been put in with former welterweight champion Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) in a dangerous tune-up fight on March 12th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cotto is coming off of shoulder surgery and hasn’t fought since mid 2010 when he defeated the light hitting Yuri Foreman to capture the World Boxing Association junior middleweight title. Bob Arum, rather than put Cotto in with a complete stiff, decided to match him with Mayorga in order to make this fight a pay-per-view bout.

However, it could blow up in Arum’s and Cotto’s face if Mayorga turns around and beats up Cotto and ends up stopping him. In looking at how Cotto performed against Foreman, Joshua Clottey and Manny Pacquiao, I can certainly see a case where Cotto could end up losing to Mayorga. And in losing to Mayorga, Cotto will likely lose the chance of getting a second fight against Manny Pacquiao for the time being.

I suppose Arum would go ahead and match Cotto up with Margarito and Pacquiao anyway, taking the gamble that casual boxing fans won’t have a clue that Cotto was taken out by the 37-year-old Mayorga. But it won’t look good matching a recently beaten Cotto with either Margarito or Pacquiao without Cotto first building himself back up in the minds of boxing fans by taking on and beating some quality fighters.

I don’t see that happening. I think Cotto is vulnerable against pretty much anyone in the junior middleweight, welterweight or middleweight divisions right now. And because Cotto continues to want to get big paydays, it means he can’t just fight anybody. He has to fight quality fighters or fighters like Mayorga that have a name, because his fights must be PPV bouts for him to get the good paydays. With the punishment that Cotto has taken in the past, he’s really vulnerable to getting stopped by Mayorga.