By Dan Ambrose: While WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s) and his loyal loving boxing fans like to see him as having been reinvented with the addition of his new trainer Cuban Pedro Diaz and his string of three consecutive wins, Mayweather doesn’t see Cotto as being improved or different than what’s he’s always been.
Mayweather said to the LA Times “Shane Mosley said he had reinvented himself after he beat [Antonio] Margarito, and you saw what happened when he fought me. There are 42 of those guys out there.”
This, of course, is completely true. Mosley was supposedly a new fighter after he beat a guy that was made to order for him in the slow as molasses Margarito in 2009. But when Mosley stepped it up against a prime fighter with good skills, Mosley was made to look shot against Mayweather in a lopsided 12 round decision loss in 2010. Mosley would go on to get a controversial 12 round draw with Sergio Mora and one-sided 12 round decision loss to Manny Pacquiao last year. There was no change in Mosley other than him looking worse now that he was facing good opposition.
Cotto has supposedly changed his fighting style and found success with wins over Yuri Foreman, Ricard Mayorga and Margarito in his last three fights. However, if you look at Cotto’s fighting style in those three fights, it was basically the same style he’s used in most of his fights. He may have used more movement in the Margarito rematch and the fight against 38-year-old Mayorga, but this wasn’t new for Cotto. He used a lot of movement in his 11th round TKO loss to Margarito in July 2008, and he still lost that fight.
Cotto is roughly the same fighter he’s always been. The only difference is that his promoter Bob Arum pretty much took Cotto out of circulation in 2009 after the Pacquiao beating, and matched him softly against one of Arum’s own fighters in Foreman, who had a bad knee and no power to speak of. Mayorga was 38, and well past his prime when Cotto was matched against him. And Margarito had lost hand speed and was coming off of three surgeries to repair his damaged right eye from the loss to Pacquiao in 2010 in addition to a year long layoff.
Mayweather will be getting the same Cotto that’s been around for ages. Cotto may have a different trainer now, but that’s not going to change the Cotto that comes in the ring on May 5th. Cotto will fight as he’s always fought and end up taking a beating. It’ll be like Mayweather start in where Pacquiao left off in pounding Cotto to smithereens in a one-sided fight.
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