By Dan Ambrose: 31-year-old former three division world champion Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) is taking a substantial risk in taking on the less than popular WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) on December 1st at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York. This is a big gamble for Cotto because it’s not a big money fight for him due to Trout not having much of a name to speak of. If Cotto loses this fight it could badly hurt his status as the number #3 pay per view star in the sport of boxing.

Cotto obviously doesn’t want to see himself losing to non-stars like Trout. If Cotto is going to get beat, he obviously would prefer that his losses all come against the big names like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Cotto has already lost to both Mayweather and Pacquiao, but he was well paid in losing those fights. In fact, Cotto was beaten by Mayweather Jr. in his last fight last May in a surprisingly close fight from start to finish. Cotto did well but couldn’t keep it together for the full 12 rounds, as he ran out of energy after the 8th.

Trout defeated Delvin Rodriguez by a 12 round unanimous decision in his last fight in June. You can probably say that Rodriguez has been Trout’s toughest opponent to date, as Trout has very little experience against top level opposition for a fighter that is holding down a major belt. His other toughest opponents have been Rigoberto Alvarez, the older brother of WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez, and David Alonso Lopez. Trout beat all of them by convincing 12 round decisions. However, none of the fights were exciting to watch, and Trout was hit a lot in some of them.

Cotto hits a lot harder than Trout’s previous opponents and it could be that Trout won’t be able to handle the power of Cotto if he’s unable to out-box him like he’s done with past opponents. If Cotto is able to land his big power shots all night long against the southpaw Trout, it’s going to be tough for Trout to try and retain his WBA strap.