Photo credit: Ed Mulholland/Roc Nation Sports www.edmulholland.photoshelter.com – By Dan Ambrose: The bigger and more mobile #6 WBA, #6 WBC, #6 WBO Daniel Geale (31-3, 16 KOs) has already noted that the smaller, 5’7” WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) struggles against fighters that use a lot of movement and their longer reach against him.
Geale obviously plans on using both when he gets inside the ring against Cotto next month on June 6th on HBO at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Cotto won the WBC 160lb belt last year in June in his catch-weight against Sergio Martinez.
Rather than vacate the WBC title like many boxing fans expected him do, Cotto has chosen to hold onto the belt at defend it for the time being against Geale, and possibly Saul “Canelo” Alvarez after that if things go well in the Geale fight. Where Cotto could be making a mistake is by holding onto the WBC title because he’s going to be facing a bigger guy than him in Geale, and he’s clearly going to be dealing with a fighter who will not be stationary.
If you’ve seen Geale fight, you’ll no doubt have witnessed how good he is at moving around the ring. Geale is very mobile, and only Gennady Golovkin was good enough to cut off the ring on him to take him out with his big power shots.
Geale’s other two defeats were narrow 12 round split decision losses to Darren Barker and Anthony Mundine. Both of those fights could have easily gone to Geale depending on how you scored them. The only time that Geale has been conclusively beaten was against Golovkin.
“Cotto has trouble in stages against guys that move and use their reach,” Geale said. “He knows that’s what I’m going to be doing and he’s going to be trying to counter that with aggression and coming forward. I’m going to use my abilities and not get caught up in his game plan.”
Cotto will be trying to cut off the ring on Geale, and make him pay with left hooks to the body at every chance he gets. If Geale is smart, stays on the move, and jabs constantly, he could puff up Cotto’s face and open up some of that scar tissue that he has around both eyes. If Cotto gets cut in this fight, Geale is going to have a very good chance of pulling off an upset in this fight. He’s got the ability to do all the same things that Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Austin Trout did in beating Cotto in 2012. Geale is also very smart. He’s not someone that is going to foolishly try and slug with Cotto.
In Cotto’s last fight against 40-year-old Sergio Martinez, he had an easy time in winning due to Martinez’s surgically repaired right knee not being stable enough to move him around the ring like he’d been able to do before he suffered the knee problem. Martinez also couldn’t get much power on his shots because he didn’t have the knee strength. As a result, Cotto was able to do pretty much what he wanted to do against a fighter that couldn’t move and couldn’t punch. It was the perfect opponent for Cotto.
“The game plan is to go in and fight my fight. It’s not to get sucked in. It’s not to get caught up in what he [Cotto] is doing. It’s to do what I do best,” Geale said.
Geale just needs to not stop and try and exchange with Cotto because that would work against him. Geale might be able to exchange with Cotto late in the fight if he has him bleeding and discouraged.
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