By Dan Ambrose: It seems that WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto is about to sabotage his December 3rd fight against Antonio Margarito by saying he’ll only fight Margarito in New York. I smell fear from Cotto.

The reason why this is potentially a catastrophic announcement is that Margarito may not be given permission to fight in New York if he fails to pass the eye exam that the New York State Athletic Commission has ordered for him to take. With New York potentially off the table if Margarito fails the eye exam, the fight will be off now with Cotto’s recent announcement.

Why does Cotto only want to fight Margarito in New York? This would be a hometown fight for Cotto, since he’s got a large Puerto Rican population in the area that would flock to see him fight. Is Cotto getting cold feet after seeing how good Margarito is looking? Cotto already took a bad beating from Margarito three years ago and took a couple of knees in getting stopped.

By saying he’ll only fight in New York, Cotto could be avoiding a second beating from Margarito. How disappointing. Hopefully, Margarito passes the eye exam and Cotto doesn’t come up with any new announcements that could screw up the fight.

Cotto is also still saying that he thinks Margarito beat him with loaded gloves in their last fight despite the fact that he has no proof to show that ever happened. Margarito was caught once with loaded gloves in the past before his fight against Shane Mosley but there has never been any previous issues like that in his past fights. Bob Arum, the promoter for both fighters, is reportedly very upset with the news about Cotto only wanting to fight in New York because he realizes this could jeopardize the fight from taking place.