By Dan Ambrose: I’ll be the first one to admit that the December 3rd rematch between WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (38-7, 27 KO’s) and Antonio Margarito (36-2, 29 KO’s) seems to be a fight that’s two years too late and feels more like an old timers fight than one with any real relevance.

Margarito, 33, has lost two out of his last three fights and has slowed down and appears to have lost a lot of his once crushing power. Cotto just looks like a guy that’s being softly matched since his one-sided loss to Manny Pacquiao. Cotto has won his last two fights, but against soft opposition in Yuri Foreman, a fighter from the same Top Rank stable as him, and 38-year-old Ricardo Mayorga.

Cotto looked especially poor in the Mayorga fight. Boxing fans want to see Cotto fight a live body like Alfredo Angulo, Vanes Martirosyan, Sergio Martinez or Saul Alvarez, but Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum has been resistant to that idea. As such, we have to sit through fights where Cotto is matched against weak punchers like Foreman, old guys like Mayorga and now on his last legs Margarito.

This is a weird moment for Arum to put Margarito back in with Cotto. The guy has lost two out of his last three fights and is coming off of a terrible 12 round beating against Manny Pacquiao last November, a fight that left Margarito with a fractured orbital bone that required surgery to repair.

Robert Garcia, the trainer for Margarito, is saying that he wants Margarito to pressure Cotto like he did three years ago when he stopped Cotto in the 11th round. However, Margarito isn’t the same fighter he was then and he probably can’t take the punishment he’ll need to take in order to get a stoppage. Cotto moves a lot now and will be less interested in standing his ground like he did last time around.