By Dan Ambrose: WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout’s first goal for Saturday night in his fight against former three division world champion Miguel Cotto is to shut up Cotto’s fans at Madison Square Garden in New York, so that they’re not a factor in encouraging Cotto like they normally are.

Cotto is one of those fighters that fights at a higher level when he’s being cheered by his fans, and there’s going to be a lot of Cotto’s fans at this fight. The Garden holds 20,000 fans, but it’s not expected to be a sellout.

Trout said “My goal on Saturday is to get the crowd quiet. I don’t want to give them anything to cheer for.”

Trout isn’t bothered by fighting in a hostile environment because he’s done this many times before in the past. However, this is going to be a little more hostile than he’s accustomed to because it’s such a big venue and Cotto is easily the biggest name that Trout has ever faced before.

Cotto has been saying that he sees nothing special in Trout, and that’s not worried about is southpaw stance or his talent in this fight. I think Cotto may change his mind awfully quick when things start going badly for him in this fight.

The main problem that Cotto is facing is that Trout is a real junior middleweight bordering on being a middleweight in size, and Cotto has been fighting former welterweights in his fights at 154. The only guy that you can call a real junior middleweight that Cotto has fought is Yuri Foreman, but he a weak puncher, totally unproven and with a bad right knee when Cotto fought him.

It wasn’t a real test for Cotto, and nothing like what he’ll be facing on Saturday night against Trout. It’s going to get real on Saturday because of the huge size, youth and speed difference. Cotto is going to have to overcome all of those advantages that Trout has in order to win and I’m not sure that he can.