by Lou”Cinder” Block
After watching a few of Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquiao’s previous fights and studying their moves and styles, I spent time sizing them up and I just can’t see the little Filipino beating on the bigger stockier Puerto Rican welterweight champion. Imagine a big brother beating up on his little brother cause he stole something, well that is how the November 14, Pacquiao vs. Cotto fight will look like. Miguel will be the big brother to Manny’s little brother. There is a saying in boxing that goes “A good big man beats a good little man” , this saying holds true unless the bigger man was weight drained and past his prime (Oscar De La Hoya), shot (Hatton) or is having some mental and personal problems prior to the fight which can mess with his performance come fight night.
Any unbiased boxing fan will agree with me that Cotto has all the tools to defeat Manny Pacquiao, especially if Cotto gets a proper training camp free of distractions, but is all well in the Cotto camp? Recently a key sparring partner Frankie “Gato” Figueroa, who has helped Miguel prepare for prior fights was let go without any warning or reason. Maybe Gato was getting the better of Cotto or he was pushing Cotto way to hard? I doubt any of this will have an effect on Miguel and he should do just fine with the sparring and training he is getting right now. Anyway sparring is just sparring, some guys look good in sparring but not so good in the actual fight. I love how reports from the Pacquiao camp boast that he dropped his sparmate, if you spar with top notch guys you won’t be dropping those guys easy. My main concern for Cotto is the catch-weight issue, we all know how Oscar had to drain himself to face Pacquiao, what worries me about this fight is will Manny Pacquiao and Freddie Roach claim yet another victim by way of dehydration?
I still believe a fresh Cotto will beat Pacquiao, unless Miguel has an off night. If Pacquiao some how happens to defeat Cotto, we will know what the reason is that night, like many of Pacquiao’s victories they are always being tarnished with question marks such as: Did Manny beat a prime fighter? What if those guys were not weight drained could he still beat them? What if they had a focused training camp with no distractions? What if Manny didn’t get all the advantages like gloves, ring, catchweight,etc? I hope just once that Roach would let Pacman take on a prime fighter without having all these crazy demands in Pacquiao’s favor like catch-weights, if you want a fighters belt do it the old fashioned way and go up to his division, don’t make him come down to a made up division, all it does is taint his fighters legacy.
Talk about it in the Now Boxing Forum membership is FREE
_____________________________________________________________________
Got an opinion want to share it with others? Submit Your Article to Nowboxing.com
