By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) is pretty confident that he’ll be victorious this Saturday night in his fight against WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) at Madison Square Garden, in New York. Cotto lost his last fight to Floyd Mayweather Jr., but he thinks he’ll win on Saturday night. For that to happen Cotto is going to have to look a lot better than he did against Mayweather because that version of Cotto will lose badly to the younger, faster and taller Trout.

Cotto said this about Saturday’s fight as quoted by RingTV.com “I’m going to be ready for the fight and to beat Austin Trout next Saturday…I’m going to be the new champion of the world. Everybody will see.”

Trout brings a lot to this fight, and perhaps near the same level as Mayweather Jr. but in a bigger body. Trout is plenty fast and he’s got the boxing skills to keep Cotto from landing his best shots. Cotto kind of depends on being able to get close enough to land his bombs, but when he’s stuck on the outside he’s a pretty average fighter.

Trout isn’t going to make the mistake of letting Cotto work his way inside so that he can land his hooks to the head and body. Trout will keep this fight at long range to where it’s more of benefit to him than the short-armed Cotto.

The key to victory for Trout is to use his jab and work Cotto’s face over so that he swells up and cuts. Cotto’s skin tends to tear easily, and that’ll make the job really easy for Trout once he’s bleeding all over the place. Once Trout has Cotto cut up, he can go for the kill late in the fight when Cotto wears down like usually does.

Cotto made a mistake of looking to Trout to try and win one of the junior middleweight title belts, because he doesn’t match up well with him. Cotto would have been better off going after WBO belt holder Zaurbek Baysangurov instead. That’s someone that Cotto could likely beat with no problems.