By Dan Ambrose: You got to love the way that Ricardo Mayorga is working WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto ahead of their fight this Saturday night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayora has already gotten the better of Cotto at all of their press conferences with his gift for gab, and he’s now predicting a 4th round knockout on Saturday against Miguel. I’m not sure if Mayorga will stop Cotto that quick, because Cotto will probably be running in the early part of the fight and trying to keep away from Mayorga.

But I do see Mayorga catching up to Cotto, busting him up badly, and then putting him out of his misery by around the 9th or 10th rounds. Cotto is more of a eight-round fighter nowadays and once his fights get into the later rounds, he runs out of gas and takes a a beating. He didn’t have a chance to run out of gas in his last fight because he was taking on one of his promoter’s fighters Yuri Foreman, who came into the fight with a bad knee.

Once Foreman’s knee gave out completely, Cotto was off the hook and out of danger of running out of gas. Mayorga will hang in there, punishing Cotto and pressuring him in each round. And by the 9th or 10th, Cotto will be exhausted and bleeding from a number of areas around his eyes. At that point I see Mayorga getting a stoppage win. Cotto is dangerous in the early rounds when he’s fresh. However, Mayorga can take a lot of punishment and return fire.

Cotto is probably going to ruin his best chance at winning by moving too much while he’s fresh and still capable of scoring a knockout. Once Cotto does stop running in the later rounds, he won’t have much left to do anything but get knocked out. I agree with Mayorga that he’ll be knocking Cotto out, but not in the rounds that he’s predicting. Cotto will prolong the fight with his movement.