(Photo Credit: Tom Casino/SHOWTIME) By Dan Ambrose: WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) comes from Las Cruces, New Mexico and doesn’t have many fans in the New York area unfortunately. But Trout isn’t bothered by the fact that he’ll have few fans supporting him when he faces Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) on December 1st at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York.

Cotto is from Puerto Rico, but he’s got a large fan base in the New York area that will be showing up to cheer him on against Trout. For his part, Trout will be lucky if any of his fans will be heard in this fight.

Trout spoke on the fan situation during today’s kick off press conference with Cotto in New York, saying “He [Cotto] can have whoever he wants in the crowd because it’s only me and him in the ring. I’m not worried about the crowd and fighting in New York…There’s only one man who’s going to be in the ring with me.”

Trout is right. It’s just going to be him and Cotto in the ring on December 1st, and it probably won’t matter how many fans that Cotto has at Madison Square Garden, it won’t matter until he brings his ‘A’ game and can fight well enough to get the victory.

It was kind of shocking to see how much bigger Trout was than Cotto when the two fighters stood face to face during a stare down. Cotto looked like someone at least a couple of divisions below Trout in size. While the two of them will likely weigh the same on fight night, the height and reach definitely won’t be the same, as Cotto will be giving up nearly three inches in height and five inches in reach. Those are significant numbers especially when you factor in that Trout is one of the few fighters that knows how to use his reach for his benefit. He’s not the type of fighter that gives up his height easily against shorter fighters.

Trout’s southpaw stance is going to give Cotto a lot of problems in this fight, because he’s not accustomed to fight southpaws. Most of the guys that Cotto has matched up against have been right-handed fighters around the same height as him. In taking on a much taller fighter with good hand speed and fighting out of the southpaw stance, Cotto could be in trouble in this fight unless he’s able to score a knockout.

Cotto has had some tough fights in the last four years against Antonio Margarito, Joshua Clottey and Floyd Mayweather Jr. He’s also had some easy fights given to him by his former promoter Bob Arum in against Michael Jennings, Yuri Foreman and a rematch against a beat up Antonio Margarito. Even in the Margarito fight, Cotto looked like he was fading at the time that the fight was halted after the 9th.

If Trout is able to win at least a couple of rounds in the first half of the fight, he’ll be in a good position to win the fight in the second half when Cotto typically fades. Cotto is working his stamina problems but it’s doubtful that he’ll be able to make much inroads in that areas before December 1st.