(Photo credit: Casino/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto is likes his chances against WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout in their fight on December 1st at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York. Cotto feels he’s going to win this belt and bring the strap back to his home country of Puerto Rico.

31-year-old Cotto is coming off of a 12 round decision loss against Floyd Maywether Jr. last May where Cotto was almost knocked out in the 12th round by Mayweather. It looked Mayweather could have finished Cotto if he had wanted to.

Cotto said during Wednesday’s press conference to promote his fight with Trout: “I will become world champion again. I’ll guarantee you all that I will return to Puerto Rico as a champion.”

There it is. Cotto has spoken. Now he’s going to have to back it up in the ring against a very tough fighter with a lot of speed, a lot of youth and a lot of talent. This isn’t a slow Antonio Margarito or an over the hill Ricardo Mayorga Cotto is fighting on December 1st. This isn’t a Yuri Foreman with a bad knee that Cotto will be in with.

There’s no physical or age related problems that will be afflicting Trout in this fight. If Cotto is going to win this fight, he’s going to have to find enough god given talent to beat a fighter that’s 100% physically healthy and not injured or old. I don’t think Cotto can beat this kind of fighter.

Trout isn’t beat up, slow and isn’t coming off of three separate eye surgeries like Margarito was in Cotto’s recent rematch with him. Even in that fight, Margarito was coming on and looking like he was going to take over the fight in the last three rounds to get another stoppage. Trout doesn’t have a bad eye and it’s going to be a big problem for Cotto to try and beat a healthy young guy like Trout. I don’t see it happening for Cotto. He’s going to get exposed in this fight and given another loss.

Trout, 27, comes into this fight off of an impressive 12 round unanimous decision win over Delvin Rodriguez last June in a fight where Trout won almost every round against a very good fighter size excellent speed, size and talent in Rodriguez. The showed that the southpaw Trout has the ability to not only beat the top fighters in the junior middleweight division but dominate them as well without taking a lot of punishment like Cotto.

Cotto comes into the fight having won three out of his last five fights but with only two of those fights coming against quality opposition. Cotto’s three wins during this time came against Foreman, Mayorga and Margarito. In other words, two old guys and one young guy with a bad leg. Margarito was not only but he was coming off of three eye surgeries and a year long layoff. He badly needed two or three tune-ups to make sure that his surgically repaired right eye would hold up but he didn’t get that. He went into the fight off of the eye surgeries and the outcome was predicable with a referee stopping the fight after the 9th round when his surgically repaired right eye closed up on him.