By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto will do alright against Floyd Mayweather Jr. as long as he’s coming forward or using lateral movement in their May 5th fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Where Cotto has had problems in the past is when he backpedals under fire and gets hit with big shots as he backs into the ropes.

We saw this in his fights against Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito in the past. I thought Cotto has stopped doing this, but in his rematch against Margarito last December, Cotto was still retreating backwards under pressure. Cotto went straight back in a line and it was so predictable what he was doing. If Margarito wasn’t so beat up from his surgically repaired right eye and so slow of foot due to aging, he would have caught up with Cotto and knocked him out cold.

I see Cotto pulling the same backing up retreat tactic that he’s done in other fights and it’s going to really hurt him against Mayweather, because he’s quick and will be be on top of him with one of his left hooks and he could drop Cotto when he pulls that move. I hope for the sake of Cotot that his new Cuban trainer gets him to stop doing that and teaches him how to get away from pressure in a less obvious manner. Mayweather is obviously going to hurt Cotto with his shots, but I think he needs to come up with a better strategy to escape pressure than what he’s been using in the past. Mayweather will rip him apart if he goes straight back every time. Cotto needs to mix it up or something, do something unpredictable that can’t figure out so easily. The reason why Mayweather wanted to fight COtto in the first place because he already knows that the guy is going to do in every situation and that’s why he was agreeable to fight him at the full 154 pound weight. He knows that Cotto is a limited fighter.