By Chris Williams: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s) has kept his weight down in between fights this time and not let himself gain a ton of weight. The 31-year-old Cotto is reportedly below 170lbs, and doesn’t have much weight to lose to make the 154 pound limit on May 5th in his mega fight against unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Cotto’s press director Bryan Perez said this to primerahora: “He [Cotto] knew something could be given and has not stopped working in the gym or running after his fight with [Antonio] Margarito. In fact, his weight is below 170 pounds, which means he just has to lost 15 pounds or less to make the weight of 154.”
That’s good news for Cotto, because he looked chunky and had a small pot belly as he started to get ready for his last fight against Margarito last December. It didn’t hurt Cotto having to melt off the weight because Margarito’s surgically repaired eye closed up quickly in the fight leading to a stoppage after the 9th. But Cotto is so much better off for the Mayweather fight if he doesn’t have to shed more than 20 pounds of weight. When you have a fighter that needs to take off 30 pounds or more during training camp, it can result in them being weight drained when it comes to the fight.
Cotto can’t afford to take off a lot of weight for Mayweather because he’s going to need his strength, endurance and speed. Mayweather will be in top form as always so it’s important that Cotto keep his weight down.
Cotto will be trained by Cuban Pedro Diaz, who recently took over for Emanuel Steward. Diaz and Cotto seemed to click in their last training camp for the Margarito fight. That was a fight where pretty much anyone could have trained Cotto and he would have won the fight.
The Mayweather fight will be the true test to see if Diaz is a good trainer or not because he’s going to need to have some ideas that he can have Cotto implement in order to beat Mayweather. Diaz is also going to have to come up with a plan B, C, D, E and F, if things don’t work out for Cotto. He can’t just get stuck one idea and use that all fight long if Mayweather is dominating.
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