By Eric Thomas: Some boxing fans believe that WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) is a shot fighter after his beatings at the hands of Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao. Cotto recently won the WBA title against a fighter from the same promotional company as him, Yuri Foreman, but Cotto beat a guy with one good leg and no power. Cotto didn’t prove in that fight that he still has anything left in the tank.

On Saturday night, Cotto is being matched up with a fighter that is considered old and over the hill in 38-year-old Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. But Mayorga has much better offensive skills compared to Cotto’s last opponent and if Mayorga can stick around for six or seven rounds, he could end up battering and stopping Cotto the same way that Margarito and Pacquiao did.

We saw recently that Margarito isn’t a world beater in his loss to Pacquiao, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Mayorga does the same thing to Cotto that Margarito did. A loss here for Cotto would be a huge blow for his career, wrecking any chances of a future rematch between him and Pacquiao, and taking all the air out of a summer rematch against Margarito.

Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum will likely not miss a beat and continue with the rematch as scheduled but it will be a hard sell to put together a fight between Cotto and Margarito with both of them coming off of serious beatings. Cotto could end up retiring from a Mayorga fight rather than continuing with his career, because a loss to Mayorga would likely make it abundantly clear to Cotto that he’s seen better days.