By Allen Fox: Both Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito are expected to weigh slightly over 160 pounds by the time they step inside the ring tonight at Madison Square Garden in New York for their grudge match. While some boxing fans may immediately dismiss the weight and see it as a meaningless statistic, you have to remember that Cotto is only 5’7″ and not a strapping six footer. Packing that kind of weight on a small frame like Cotto’s means only one thing – he’s going to have problems if the fight goes past the 6th round.

Being built like a little truck isn’t conducive for a fight that is going to involve a lot of action and constant movement. Cotto’s frame is designed for short fights and/or the type of fights where there are a long lulls between activity that will allow Cotto frequent rest breaks. The problem here is that Margarito isn’t going to be giving the wide-bodied Cotto any rest breaks and is going to be forcing him to either fight or run. Cotto will likely run because he can’t fight for prolonged periods without quickly gassing out. But the running will do much of the same thing to him sooner or later.

The reality is that Margarito’s wiry frame is designed for a long aerobic fight where he’s chasing down an opponent and constantly firing punches. If you watch the Cotto-Margarito fight from 2008, you’ll notice that Margarito was literally jogging the entire fight. I’ve never seen a fighter do that before the entire 12 round. Margarito was forced to job in order to chase down Cotto, and it was like Margarito was on a three minute job each round, and he was clearly up for it and Cotto wasn’t. With Cotto now even bigger than he was in their last fight, I think it’s going to be very hard for the 160 pound Cotto to lug all that weight around for 12 rounds and be able to run from Margarito carrying that kind of weight.

He’s done himself no favors by weighing that much and we’re probably going to see even shorter fight than last time. Forget the hand wrap nonsense that Cotto has been spouting recently; he lost because Margarito had the better aerobic conditioning and ran him down like a cheetah running down a heavy wildebeest. Now three years later fighting at a heavier weight in the junior middleweight division, I see this as being even more of a problem for Cotto. He’s not made to carry that kind of weight around for more than six rounds against an active fighter like Margarito. As I said, Cotto is made for short fights against guys that don’t throw a lot of punches and let Cotto set the pace. Margarito won’t do that tonight. He’s going to make Cotto use his legs and that’s going to tire Cotto quickly.