By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto (41-5, 33 KOs) is promising to be the same exciting fighter he’s always been for his 16-year pro career when he defends his WBO junior middleweight title against welterweight Sadam Ali (25-1, 14 KOs) on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.
(Photo Credit: Tom Hogan/Hogan Photos/Golden Boy Promotions)
Cotto will be retiring after this Saturday’s fight with Sadam Ali. HBO Boxing will televise the fight. It’s hoped that the fight will be a good one. The chances are high that it won’t. Cotto’s last fight against Yoshihiro Kamegai was a disappointment. It wasn’t a thrilling fight, and HBO televised it anyway. On paper, Cotto-Ali is just as bad. Hopefully it won’t be.
It’s been a while since Cotto was involved in an exciting fight. You can say the last truly exciting fight involving Cotto took place 5 years ago in his loss to Austin Trout. Cotto’s fights since then have been either mismatches or contests where he didn’t look great.
These are Cotto’s fights since he lost to Austin Trout in 2012:
• Delvin Rodriguez – mismatch
• Sergio Martinez – 40-year-old Sergio with an injured leg – mismatch
• Daniel Geale – mismatch – Geale was way past his best when Cotto fought him
• Saul Canelo Alvarez –Cotto lost and didn’t look great
• Yoshihiro Kamegai – mismatch
Cotto has fought one good fighter in the last 5 years of his career, and that was against Canelo Alvarez. That was a loss for Cotto.
”On Saturday, I’ll be the same Miguel you watched for the last 16 years. I’m going to be a warrior inside the ring. I’m going to do my best as always for the benefit of my family,” said Cotto at his final press conference on Thursday.
Cotto is NOT the same fighter he was during the early part of his career. We saw that in Cotto’s last 2 fights against Kamegai and Canelo. Cotto is older now and he’s no longer fighting quality opposition. Kamegai was just a journeyman type fighter, but with an embarrassingly high ranking by the World Boxing Organization.
”I know there are a lot of people saying this might not be a good fight. Everybody can say what they want, but when we get in there Saturday night you’re going to see an amazing fight,” said Ali.
Ali seems to be bothered that the boxing world sees him as not having any chance of beating Cotto. The fans expect it to be a bad fight, because they saw Ali lose to Jessie Vargas last year, and he looked like mediocre level welterweight. Cotto and Golden Boy Promotions picked Sadam Ali anyway. It’s not a good way for Cotto to retire. Ali is not the type of guy that Cotto needed for this fight. HBO let Cotto fight an over-matched opponent on their network in his previous mismatch against Kamegai. HBO should have insisted that Cotto fight a quality opponent this time around if they were going to televise the fight.
