By Aaron Klein: In easily the biggest, toughest fight of his short boxing career WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-0, 26 KOs) will be putting both his unbeaten record and title on the line against the punching machine Mexican Antonio Margarito (36-5, 26 KOs) this Saturday night in a 12-round bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cotto, 27, a former light welterweight, is going up against one of the biggest welterweights he’s faced since moving up to the division in December 2006. Up to this point, Cotto has faced mostly smaller, less offensively skillful welterweights than Margarito, ones that he could either out-slug or out-out-punch on the inside.
However, he may need to find a new way to win if he plans on being successful against Margarito, who appears to be a level or two above the competition that Cotto has faced thus far since moving up to the welterweight division. That’s not a knock on fighters like Zab Judah, Shane Mosley, Oktay Urkal, Carlos Quintana or Alfonso Gomez, because each of them are good fighters, but as far as being in the same class as Margarito, they’re clearly not.