By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto believes he’s a changed fighter under the helm of Cuban trainer Pedro Diaz and sees himself as being able to give unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. his first loss of his career on May 5th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cotto is a big underdog in this fight, but he doesn’t care because he believes he’s got the knowledge and ability to beat Mayweather.

Cotto said to ESPN “No matter which way Mayweather comes, I will prepare myself for anything he brings to the fight. If he decides to run or if he decides to stand and fight, I will be prepared…This is going to be my best and biggest victory for everyone to see on May 5.”

Wow! Cotto seems unusually confident going into this fight despite having faced no one of note since his one-sided beat down against Manny Pacquiao in 2009. You can say that was Cotto’s last real fight because his last three opponents have dealt with one kind of affliction or another that has left them short of what they once were at the time Cotto fought them. He fought Yuri Foreman with a bad right leg; 38-year-old past his prime Ricardo Mayorga and Antonio Margarito coming off of three eye surgeries. I’d say those guys weren’t what they once were by the time Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum matched them.

While I believe Cotto did a good job of finding answers to the banged up and old fighters that Arum hand-picked for him during the last two years, I don’t think Cotto can come up with any answers against a fighter of Mayweather’s quality. He’s not physically banged up or as hold as the hills, and that’s going to be a problem for Cotto. And I don’t see his Cuban trainer as having made enough of an impact on Cotto’s fighting style for him to beat guys that he just can’t physically beat like Mayweather. Cotto is still the same fighter that got beaten by Antonio Margarito in 2008. The only difference is he’s older now, trained by a different guy and coming off of three fights against limited guys. He’s not any better than he was before his beat down against Margarito. If anything, I believe he’s 80% of what he was back then.