By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions is eager to line up Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) to be an opponent for their star in the making WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in 2013. Cotto is the #2 pick for Golden Boy to put in with Canelo after they make an effort to get the #1 guy Floyd Mayweather Jr. to face Canelo.
Cotto seems to be interested in facing Alvarez, and why wouldn’t he? It’s a big money fight if Mayweather isn’t available to fight Cotto again or Manny Pacquiao doesn’t show any interest in fighting Cotto at the full weight for the junior middleweight division.
However, Cotto has one problem that could throw a wrench into him getting a big money fight against the young 22-year-old Alvarez and that’s WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KOs), who Cotto will be facing on December 1st next month at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York, USA. Trout is a well schooled fighter with good size, speed, power and boxing ability.
He’s more than good enough to beat the 32-year-old Cotto, and it doesn’t matter that the fight will be taking place in New York where Cotto draws a lot of support from fans. Trout is obvious to crowds when he fights and he’s not going to be deterred by loud crowd noise. If Cotto is gong to beat Trout, he’s going to have to find a way to legitimately deal with his size, youth and skills because the crowd won’t save Cotto if he doesn’t ability to win this fight.
Cotto has been matched pretty carefully in the last three years apart from his fight with Mayweather Jr. Since Cotto’s loss to Pacquiao in 2009, he’s not been matched hard with the exception of the one fight with Mayweather. Cotto has beaten three out of his last four opponents but that really doesn’t mean much because these are the guys that Cotto his wins against – Ricardo Mayorga, Yuri Foreman and Antonio Margarito. Mayorga was old and past his prime, Foreman was a light puncher with a bad right knee that needed to be operated on, and Margarito was past his prime with a bad right eye.
You can really consider Cotto’s record during the last three years as 0-1 with the loss coming at the hands of Mayweather. Now Cotto is facing another good fighter in Trout, and I think he’s going to have major problems in this fight with Trout’s talent, youth and size. He’s not old and shot, and he doesn’t have a bad eye or a bad knee. He’s healthy, young and ready to upset Cotto’s plans for a fight against Alvarez or whoever else he was hoping to fight in 2013 in terms of the big names.
Comments are closed.