By Eric Thomas: Sergio Martinez (51-3-2, 28 KO’s) took an embarrassing beating tonight in getting annihilated in 10 rounds by the younger, stronger and much healthier Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KO’s) in a fight that suggests that it might be time for the 39-year-old Martinez to step away from the sport and retire. Martinez’s trainer Pablo Sarmiento said at the post fight press conference “No decision has been made if Martinez should retire.”
Both of Martinez’s surgically repaired knees looked weak and wobbly even before the action started. The fact that Martinez’s knees still weren’t strong looking after more than a year of physical rehab on them, then it’s probably a good indication that he might need to retire. It’s hard to imagine Martinez getting trounced the way he did tonight if both of his knees were healthy like they were in his fight against Matthew Macklin in 2012.
Martinez can certainly take another 6-12 months off from boxing to rehab his knees further, but it might not be help. He’s going to be turning 40 next year, and it’s not likely that he’ll be any better than he is now with more time off from the sort in order to work on rehabbing his knee.
With the way Martinez looked tonight, he probably couldn’t deal with any of the top contenders in the middleweight division. Martinez would struggle even against normal guys like Daniel Jacobs, Marco Antonio Rubio, Daniel Geale, Martin Murray and Curtis Stevens. Without strong legs and his punching power, Martinez would be a sitting duck against those guys.
This isn’t the first fight where Martinez was totally vulnerable. In his previous fight against Martin Murray a year ago, Martinez struggled badly. This was against a less than dangerous middleweight. Murray has no power, and he’s someone that a good middleweight like Gennady Golovkin would destroy.
Cotto had a huge lead on the judges’ scorecards at the time of the stoppage with all three of them scoring it 90-77. The only way that Martinez could have come back and get a victory is if he were to have knocked Martinez out, but that wasn’t going to happen because Martinez didn’t have the knee strength for him to put his body into his punches. He was someone without a foundation under him, and that’s why he was getting knocked off balance even by shots that didn’t hurt him.
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