Cotto vs. Margarito: What are the odds that Antonio rips Miguel to pieces again?

By Boxing News - 11/01/2011 - Comments

Image: Cotto vs. Margarito: What are the odds that Antonio rips Miguel to pieces again?By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto has had things pretty easy since his last beating. His promoter Bob Arum has carefully guided Cotto since he was destroyed by Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao and has kept him away from dangerous threats of any kind. Arum has even helped Cotto pick up a paper title against one of his own fighters from his Top Rank stable, the light hitting Yuri Foreman.

But even in that one, Cotto looked terrible until Foreman injured his defective leg and the fight was halted soon after in the 9th. But Arum has done a great job of keeping Cotto winning perhaps a lot longer than he would have otherwise. Cotto isn’t the same fighter he once was three years ago. That much is evident. Arum is putting him in against another one of his Top Rank oldsters, 33-year-old Antonio Margarito, who has a great deal of mileage on his body. The thought here is that Margarito may be degraded enough for Cotto to win this time.

Goodness knows, Cotto took a furious beating the last time he fought Margarito back in 2008, and was left a bloody barley recognizable mess. There wasn’t any rush to put Cotto back in with Margarito after that fight, but after two losses in his last three fights for Margarito, he’s now worthy of a rematch with Cotto. It’s pretty obvious that Cotto is the protected fighter here, the guy that’s supposed to win. But I’m not so sure if he can.

The body is willing but his skin and his inability to take hard shots without falling to pieces could be his downfall in this fight. Margarito already knows how to whip Cotto just by staying alive and landing shots. Cotto does all the rest by coming apart. All Margarito has to do is make sure he can stay in there long enough to put hands on Cotto and we’ll likely see Cotto bleeding like a stuck pig before too long.



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