Mayweather Sr. says Cotto has to do more to get Floyd Jr. rematch

By Boxing News - 10/09/2013 - Comments

cotto3436By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. wasn’t impressed with Miguel Cotto’s opponent last Saturday night in Delvin Rodriguez, and he thinks that Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) will have to beat a much better opponent than that if he wants to get a rematch against Floyd Jr. From his perspective, Floyd Sr. thinks Cotto would have beaten Delvin even without his new trainer Freddie Roach because he doesn’t see Rodriguez as a talented fighter.

Floyd Sr. told Hustleboss “He [Cotto] got to fight somebody. He ain’t fought nobody. Until he fights somebody, he can forget about getting another shot with anybody…He could have did that [beat Rodriguez] without Freddie Roach…who the hell is that guy who he fought?”

Cotto and Roach want the rematch against Mayweather Jr., but as Floyd Sr. says it, they still need to fight a live body to prove that he deserves another fight against Floyd Jr.

At the end of the day, Cotto still has lost 2 out of his last 3 fights, and beating a fighter like Delvin Rodriguez didn’t do anything to show that he’s still a relevant fighter. Cotto needs to take on a good opponent and beat them decisively.

The good news is that Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum wants to put him in a big fight next June. The bad news is the opponent is WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, who is bigger, faster, stronger, and more skilled than Cotto.

This is going to likely be another Cotto beat down like the one he took in his loss to Antonio Margarito in his first fight with him in 2008. You want Cotto to get a good victory so that he can fight Mayweather again, but this isn’t likely going to end well for Cotto because of Martinez’s speed and power.

It’s doubtful that Cotto would be interested in a fight with Sergio if he wasn’t coming off of a less than impressive performance in his last fight in April against Martin Murray. Sergio broke his left hand in that fight and re-injured his surgically operated on knee.

Fighting with only one hand and a bad knee, Sergio struggled to get the victory. But he’s a lot better than he looked in that fight, and if Cotto is counting on him looking the way he did against Murray, then he could be in for a big beating.

A win for Cotto over Sergio Martinez will likely get him a rematch against Floyd. But the problem is how does Cotto actually do that? He’s slower than Martinez, and a lot shorter. If he tries to crowd him the way he did against Delvin Rodriguez, Martinez will either nail Cotto with straight left hands to the head, hard jabs or he’ll move out of range.

Martinez can do a number of things that will make Cotto miserable. If Cotto runs into too many of Martinez’s straight left hands, then we could see him on his knees. Martinez hits a lot harder than the guys that Cotto has been fighting lately, and I compare Martinez favorably to former slugger Ricardo Torres, who gave Cotto all kinds of problems in their fight in 2005.



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