By Dan Ambrose: It looks like WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto is going to try and use his expiring contract with Top Rank to try and get a rematch against Manny Pacquiao, who defeated Cotto with the help of a catchweight in 2009.

Cotto took a beating in that fight and really wasn’t competitive after the first few rounds. In an interview in a Peurto Rican news site, Cotto said he can easily move down to 147 lbs to fight and that he thinks he’ll beat Pacquiao in a rematch.

Cotto’s new style of fighting, which involves hitting, running, shoving and holding, has got him confident that he can beat Pacquiao. However, you really have to look at the big picture here. Cotto has been matched incredibly softly for the past two years against mainly Bob Arum’s stable guys. Cotto’s been matched against Margarito, who came into the fight with a bad eye, but who seemed to be getting to Cotto at the time the ringside doctor stopped the fight in the 10th.

Cotto also has been matched against Yuri Foreman, another fighter with a physical problem (a bad leg) going into the fight. Cotto was also matched against 38-year-old Ricardo Mayorga, a fighter well past his prime by at least nine years. Those wins seem to have planted ideas in Cotto’s head making him think a rematch with Pacquiao will be different this time. Who knows? Cotto may realize he doesn’t stand a chance and just wants the payday.

I just hope Arum stands firm and tells him the next fight is for Cotto to fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., not Pacquiao. It’s really too soon still for Cotto to fight Pacquiao, because it seems like only yesterday that Pacquiao battered Cotto had him his face looking like a giant tomato. If they never fight again it will be too soon for me. I don’t want to see Cotto get beat up again. I’d rather he take on someone where he would at least stand a chance like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.