By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF/WBA/WBO welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (38-7, 27 KO’s) wants to prove that his prior 11th round knockout win over Miguel Cotto (36-2, 29 KO’s) from three years ago wasn’t a fluke thing that just happened out of the blue and he wants to show that he is the better fighter in their rematch on December 3rd at the Madison Square Garden in New York, New York.

A lot of boxing fans think Margarito had loaded gloves at the time he battered Cotto to a pulp in the 11th round stoppage. The strange thing about that fight was that Cotto’s face was pretty much unmarked until the 10th round when he suddenly stopped running and tried to fight it out with Margarito along the ropes.

Margarito probably didn’t more than 10 to 15 shots after trapping Cotto, yet he had his face ripped to shreds in that short amount of time. In the 11th round, Cotto decided to take a knee a couple of times rather than to try and turn back Margarito’s viscous assault. after the second knee, the fight was halted, leaving Cotto with a face that was a bloody mess.

Margarito, now 33, isn’t the same fighter he was back then. The three years has been cruel to him, slowing him down, decreasing his once high punch output and robbing him of much of his once devastating power. Now Margarito is just as slow guy with average power and average workrate. He’s a sitting duck for almost any good welterweight or junior middleweight at this point.

Of course, Cotto isn’t the same fighter either and he’s been very carefully matched by his promoter Bob Arum in the past three years, mostly keeping him away from real threats other than his big money fight against Manny Pacquiao where Cotto took a one-sided beating and was stopped in the 12th round in November 2009.

Cotto has faced two week opponents since then in WBA junior middleweight paper champion Yuri Foreman and 38-year Ricardo Mayorga. Neither of these guys are the best fighters at junior middleweight, but they’re still top five guys. Margarito might actually be a top 8 or 9 fighter in the division, but Cotto is definitely top five, but very, very vulnerable unless matched carefully like he’s been recently.