By Chris Williams: Former IBF/WBO welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (38-7, 27 KO’s) has reportedly received a medical clearance to fight WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (36-2, 29 KO’s) on December 3rd. The two fighters will be going at it in a rematch at the Madison Square Garden in New York, New York.

However, with Margarito having been beaten up in two of his last three fights, the Cotto-Margarito fight has more of a old timer’s fight feel to it than a fight with any relevance. Margarito looks like a shell of his former self that beat Cotto by an 11th round TKO three years ago, and is coming off of a serious injury that required surgery and many months to heal.

This isn’t the kind of fight that you want a fighter to be taking after a bad eye injury like the one Margarito sustained in his loss against Manny Pacquiao last November. Usually when you have a fighter that’s coming off a bad eye injury, they get wiped out in their next fights when they get matched tough. And this is a tough fight for someone with such a bad injury like Margarito, who looks to have slipped a couple of notches from the level he was fighting at in 2008 when he beat Cotto.

Even Cotto looks nothing like what he used to. He’s still winning but look at who his Top Rank Promotional company have been matching him against for him to keep him winning: Michael Jennings, Ricardo Mayorga, and Yuri Foreman. Notice a trend here? It looks like Cotto is being matched softly nowadays, which would help explain why he’s been winning as of late instead of getting drilled. Cotto hasn’t been matched against the really tough lions in the junior middleweight division like Alfredo Angulo, Vanes Martirosyan, Saul Alvarez, Erislandy Lara, and Carlos Molina.

The weight for the Margarito-Cotto fight could be at 150 lbs. It’s unclear whose idea that is, because both of them have been fighting at junior middleweight as of late. Looks like someone is trying to get an advantage. Hopefully it’s not Cotto. He already has a big advantage with Margarito looking totally shot, missing his power and coming off of a beating and eye surgery. What more of an advantage do you need than that?