By Ian Aldous: On December 1st in Madison Square Garden, New York, Austin ‘No Doubt’ Trout (25-0) defends his WBA world light-middleweight championship against the Puerto Rican legend and four-time world champion, Miguel Cotto (37-3). It is undoubtedly the marquee fight that Austin has been searching for since becoming champion in February of last year.

This week Austin took a few moments of his time to talk about the fight.

The fight was first announced via the most modern method of communication, Twitter. The tweet has been greeted with a generally positive reception from fans, including myself. It’s a legitimate title fight between two of the very best in the light-middleweight division (boxrec.com ranks Trout at No.5 and Cotto at No.4) and something that Austin is delighted to be a part of. “Well, you know, excited is the best way to describe it but I kinda have to fall back on this excitement because we got three months, so I don’t wanna wear myself out before the fight.”

It is obviously the biggest fight of Austin’s young career. At 26 years of age (27 on Sepember 18th) he’s undefeated and currently holds a major world championship. He needs to look at the fight as his chance to score a victory over a big name and announce to the world that he does belong at the top level in the sport and treat it almost like a coming-out party. “Most definitely. It’s like this is my world championship fight, literally like he has the belt and I gotta take the belt from him or fade into the background. This is my bread and butter right here.”

With the fight taking place in New York, it’s clear to everyone that the passionate Puerto Rican fan base will make Madison Square Garden feel like home for Cotto. Fighting away from home is something that will not give Trout any sleepless nights before the fight. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I’m just gonna feed off the energy whether it’s positive or negative and it’s just gonna cause to motivate me. I’m really excited to shock the world on December 1st.”

Austin couldn’t be happier with the role that his adviser and one of the biggest players in the boxing game, Al Haymon had in making the fight. “I know Al Haymon has been working on this for quite a while and I heard that he had something up his sleeve. I didn’t know it was specifically this for about a month now. All I know is I’m excited and I don’t wanna say shocked but I was caught off guard that Cotto was even in the works.”

Cotto goes into this fight on the back of his impressive performance in a losing effort against the best fighter in the world, Floyd Mayweather Jr. Austin firmly believes that Cotto is still at the top of his game and this motivates him greatly to get the job done on December 1st. “He gave Mayweather one of the toughest fights he’s ever had, it was a great fight. Even though he lost he still, in my opinion, came out on top. I’m very excited that he got that type of performance so there’s no excuse for when I come out victorious. There’s no excuse by saying ‘Mayweather just beat him up and he’s shot from that’ or anything like that because I don’t think he’s a shot fighter at all.”

Check out the official site of Austin ‘No Doubt’ Trout located at www.austintrout.com