As was reported Wednesday by BoxingScene.com's T.K. Stewart, Miguel Cotto has sent Francisco "El Gato" Figueroa home after just a week of sparring at his Tampa, FL training camp. Three days later, the former NABF junior welterweight champion Figueroa still doesn't know why.
According to the 20-3 (13 KO) Figueroa, he got a call at approximately 10:30 PM Monday night after his fourth sparring session with Cotto from an unidentified Cotto rep asking if everything was OK in camp. When he asked why he was curious, the caller replied, "Because they're sending you home."
"Everybody was shocked," says Figueroa. "My job is to spar and for them to not tell me why, it's wrong. I know a lot of thing are wrong in boxing but damn.
"The only way I would send people home is if they weren't giving me the right kind of work. If they were just in there to run around the ring and only in it for the money, I wouldn't want them. Also if I was beating them up too much.
"If a guy is throwing punches and makes me have to figure him out, that's good work. So I don't get it."
Figueroa was supposed to remain in camp through October 30th, five days before his own fight against welterweight Rashad Holloway on ESPN2 and 15 days before Cotto's fight with Manny Pacquiao on November 14 in Las Vegas.
Figueroa forged his reputation as a tough gym warrior through tours of duty in camps with Arturo Gatti, Shane Mosley, Ricky Hatton and Andre Berto. Figueroa says the only time he had been sent home was in 2007 when he worked for - guess who? - Miguel Cotto to prepare for Zab Judah. Figueroa was sent home a week early due to a rift with then-Cotto trainer Evangelista Cotto. Evangelista has since been replaced by assistant Joe Santiago.
Cotto is retaining 37-year-old Fred Tukes of College Park, GA, 7-1-1, who has never fought past six rounds as a professional and 25-year-old Rochester, NY resident Kenny Abril who owns a 9-3-1 (5 KO) record and the New York junior welterweight title.
"They're boxing him, doing very well. We were all bringing different angles to Cotto. They were giving him what they needed to. The only difference with me was that I was applying more pressure."
Figueroa is coming off of a crushing defeat at the hands of Randall Bailey in April in an IBF 140 pound eliminator. He has moved his camp back to The Bronx, NY to the Morris Park Boxing Club, his home base.
Reacting to comments from Holloway that appeared on this site early in the week in which Holloway said Figueroa and himself were "in two different classes" and that Figueroa was just all heart, El Gato responded, "He can talk all he wants to talk but at the end of the day he's going to see what I'm made of. If I'm all heart he better have heart 'cause I'll break him. He had a better amateur career but his professional fights are nothing like what my professional fights have been." -RS
Ryan Songalia is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at songaliaboxing@aol.com.
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