By Dan Ambrose: Welterweight contender Carson Jones has been helping Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) out recently with sparring to try and get him ready for his December 1st fight against WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) at the Madison Square Garden in New York. Jones has a pretty good idea of how good Cotto is after sparring with him and can give an expert opinion about whether Cotto has a real chance against Trout or not.

Jones said to Chris Robinson at CRHarmony “I think it’s a tough fight for Miguel. Austin is young, hungry, but he just doesn’t have the names on his resume yet. I think this will be a tough fight for Cotto.”

It seems like Jones is dropping a pretty big hint that Cotto could be over his head in this fight against the taller, faster and much younger Trout. I can see where Jones is spotting trouble for Cotto because Trout has pretty much every advantage you can think of in this fight except for experience and power, and those things aren’t that big of a deal. Cotto hits harder than Trout, but not by enough to where it’ll give Cotto much of an advantage. It’s negligible. And Cotto’s experience is really limited to these fighters:

Zab Judah – had Cotto hurt
Shane Mosley – was past his prime but still gave Cotto problems
Floyd Mayweather Jr – beat Cotto at his own game by slugging with him
Manny Pacquiao – totally destroyed Cotto
Ricard Mayorga – old and past his prime but gave Cotto problems
Antonio Margarito – beat Cotto badly in the first fight
Yuri Foreman – fought with a bad right leg
Carlos Quintana – A fighter with a chin problem
Paulie Malignaggi – gave Cotto problems despite zero power
Ricardo Torres – had Cotto badly hurt
DeMarcus Corley – had Cotto badly hurt
Randall Bailey – had Cotto badly hurt
Joshua Clottey – Cotto looked like he was going to quit at one point.

Cotto’s experience is meaningless because he’s struggle in many of the fights and is rarely impressive.