Cotto vs. Trout: Old Age vs. youth

By Boxing News - 10/14/2012 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: If you were to describe what the December 1st match-up between Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) and WBA World light middleweight Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) was all about you’d have to consider it an old age vs. youth type battle with the 27-year-old Trout representing the youth side of the fight. He’s a young 27, hasn’t been in any wars, and has been able to win most of his fights without taking much punishment.

In contrast, Cotto is about to turn an old 32, and has taken a lot of beatings in fights against Manny Pacquiao, Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, Floyd Mayweather Jr, Shane Mosley, Zab Judah, Richardo Torres and Muhammad Abdullev. Those were all really hard fights for Cotto and he took an enormous amount of punishment in each of those fights to where he’s not the same fighter now compared to back then.

Trout is one of those fighters that has a lot of things going for him. For example, he’s fast, he can punch, he moves incredibly well around the ring, he’s light on his feet, he can block shots and he’s a tall fighter at 5’10”. He’s a big guy and he’s very athletic. Trout isn’t someone that will stand there and look to slug it out with his opponents in a back and forth type of fight. He doesn’t need to fight in a primitive slugging style like a lot of fighters do because of his excellent boxing skills that keeps him from taking punishment.

Trout has looked good in beating Delvin Rodriguez, David Lopez and Rigoberto Alvarez in the past year, showing that he’s got the skills to beat the best in the division and make it look easy.

Trout likes his chances against the more experienced Cotto, and sees himself being able to outbox him without taking a lot of punishment. In his last fight, Trout was able to bottle up Delvin Rodriguez’s excellent offense to keep him from getting off with his shots. That was a masterful performance from Trout, because he never even let Rodriguez, a very good fighter, get into the fight even for a second.

Cotto is going to need to KO Trout in order to win this fight because he’s not going to be able to outbox him, that much is known. Trout is just way too big and way too talented in terms of his boxing skill to let a short little plodder like Cotto to be able to win the fight over him.



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