By Dan Ambrose: There’s no question that WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) took at least savage beatings in the past three years in his losses to Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao. Cotto, 30, also took terrible punishment in his fights with Joshua Clottey and Shane Mosley. Those fights seem to have taken something out of Cotto, because he appear to be the same fighter he once was regardless of the paper title that he’s in possession due to a win over one of his promoter Bob Arum’s fighters Yuri Foreman last year in June.

Cotto remains a fighter that has taken a huge amount of punishment and if he’s not officially shot, he might be getting close to that stage in my view. On March 12th, Cotto is being matched against 37-year-old Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s), a fighter that can still bring it despite his slightly advanced age. Mayorga doesn’t have a lot of miles on his fight odometer compared to Cotto.

In Cotto’s win over Clottey, Cotto looked on the verge of quitting in the 9th, the way he did when he took a couple of knees against Margarito in his stoppage loss. Cotto was covered with blood and looked like he didn’t want anymore. Clottey was too clueless to realize this and just stopped punching and covered up the remainder of the fight.

Cotto hasn’t been really tested since he was spanked by Pacquiao in November 2009. Cotto fought Foreman and that’s it. The Foreman fight didn’t tell us anything about Cotto because Foreman had no power, meager offensive skills, and fought only one good leg. This is nothing compared to what Cotto will be facing on March 12th against Mayorga, who can actually punch, has two good legs and can punch hard with both hands. I have a feeling Mayorga is going to slice Cotto up early and we may see Cotto mentally quit in this fight while covered with blood rather than take more of a beating.