By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) is showing the boxing world what kind of fighter he is my refusing to fight WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 20 KO’s) using a catchweight handicap like Manny Pacquiao used when he defeated Cotto three years ago at welterweight.
Mayweather didn’t want to weaken Cotto with a catchweight and thus cheapen a potential win. Mayweather and Cotto will fight on May 5th in an HBO televised pay-per-view bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This is going to be a really tough fight for Mayweather, because Cotto won’t be weakened like he was when he fought Pacquiao. Cotto will also likely have a small weight advantage by coming into the fight over 160.
Mayweather doesn’t believe in coming in huge for his fights and will focus on being lean and mean so that he can have his quickness still intact. However, Cotto will have a lot of power with his size and if he’s able to catch Mayweather with a big right hand or left hook, we could see Cotto score a quick knockout in this fight.
I think the longer the fight goes on the better the chances that Mayweather wins it due to Cotto’s weak skin and tendency to break down later in his fights.
Mayweather will have to be extra careful in the first four rounds, because if Cotto catches him with a big shot the way that Shane Mosley did in his fight against Mayweather in 2010, Cotto won’t run out of gas while trying to finish him off. If Cotto hurts Mayweather then he’s strong enough to finish him off and not run out of gas.
Mayweather really showed Pacquiao up by agreeing to fight Cotto at 154 rather than trying to pressure him to move down to 147 to fight him. Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum were recently trying to get a fight against Cotto, but the fight couldn’t be made due to Pacquiao’s insistence that Cotto move all the way down to 147 without him meeting Cotto halfway between 147 and 150. Cotto refused and that made the Cotto-Mayweather fight possible.
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