(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) By Dan Ambrose: Bob Arum, the ex-promoter for WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, took the opportunity to give his two cents about Cotto as he approaches his huge fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Arum said to the Los Angeles Times “The only problem is he’s [Cotto] been fighting for a while. That starts to wear on you. That’s the concern.”
True, very true. I wonder, though, if Arum would be saying this if he was promoting Cotto against Mayweather instead of being outside looking in? Arum was eager to match Cotto against his cash cow Manny Pacquiao just a couple of months ago, but when Pacquiao wasn’t eager to fight at a catchweight and insisted on the fight being held at 147, Cotto moved on to a fight against Mayweather Jr.
Cotto has been in a lot of hard fights, but that’s probably not going to be the main reason why he’ll lose on Saturday to Mayweather, if he does lose. It’ll be a combination of lack of hand speed, defense and poor stamina. The stamina issue could be the biggest problem for Cotto, because he fights very well in the first six rounds of his fights, but seems to start coming apart in the second half of his fights where he gasses out.
If Cotto can land a lot of shots in the first half of the fight against Mayweather, he deplete the undefeated fighter enough to where it might not matter if Cotto tired out late. Mayweather might be too beat up to take advantage of it, but I wouldn’t count on that happening. Cotto is going to have problems landing his shots against the defensive artist Mayweather, and he’ll to take chances if he wants to land anything in this fight.
Comments are closed.