By Dan Ambrose: Roger Mayweather, the uncle and trainer for Floyd Mayweather Jr., was perhaps the one good thing about the entire HBO Mayweather-Cotto 24/7 episodes. It’s just too bad there wasn’t more of him in the episodes because the guy has a way with words and a ton of charisma.
Roger’s kind of amused by the fact that Miguel Cotto’s trainer has a doctorate degree. Roger said this in episode 4 last night: “You [Cotto] got a doctor training you. He’s going to have to patch your a** up.”
Obviously, Diaz isn’t that kind of a doctor. Diaz had a PhD in Pedagogical Sciences from Cuba, where he was an amateur coach. Cotto puts a lot of believe in Diaz and I guess is impressed with his amateur credentials. However, as a trainer in the pro game, Diaz is still unproven and it’s unclear whether he’s going to be able to make a big impact on the outcome of tonight’s fight.
There are only so many things you can come up with for a fighter, in particular when he’s facing a far superior athlete in Floyd Mayweather Jr. Diaz can probably come up with a genius plan, if one exists, and Mayweather will still foil it by changing his game to something else. Cotto isn’t fighting a punching bag and he’s not going to be shadow boxing or catching a rubber ball thrown to him by Diaz. This is real boxing, and all the stuff that Diaz has put into Cotto’s head may end up being useless to him tonight.
What Cotto needs is speed, and he doesn’t have that. Without speed, Cotto is going to need a good defensive game to stay in this fight as long as possible. I don’t think Diaz is going to be able to change how easily Cotto is hit. That’s the problem. Cotto’s defense is terrible, and his offense has always been his defense. But when facing guys with good offensive skills of their own, Cotto has struggled. We’ll likely see him struggle again tonight when he starts getting drilled by Mayweather.
Comments are closed.