No one ever will be able to say Miguel Cotto hasn’t had a terrific career. But considering what has happened in three of his past four fights, one has to wonder what the Puerto Rican star has left.
The two-division champion lost his welterweight title when he was stopped by Antonio Margarito in the 11th round of a brutal fight in July 2008. Cotto had an easy time of it with Michael Jennings in his next fight seven months later and won a vacant title with a fifth-round technical knockout of the unheralded fighter.
Cotto absorbed more significant punishment in a split-decision victory over Joshua Clottey last June.
Finally, this past November, Cotto again was badly beaten up in a 12th-round TKO loss to Manny Pacquiao.
A week from tonight at Yankee Stadium, Cotto will move up in weight and challenge Yuri Foreman for his junior middleweight championship (on HBO). Cotto’s promoter, Bob Arum, said Cotto doesn’t have to prove a thing to anyone. But even he admitted there is no guarantee Cotto isn’t damaged goods.
“Obviously, sometimes, when a fighter gets beat like that, like he did with Margarito and then with Pacquiao, it does take a lot out of him,” Arum said. “Whether it has in this case, we’ll know on June 5.
“For me to say, `Well, it’s not going to affect him,’ I don’t know. Neither do you and probably Miguel doesn’t know, either.”
Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward is in Cotto’s corner for the first time and had the same concerns upon being hired.
And not just regarding the aforementioned four-fight stretch.
“He has taken some terrible beatings in five or six fights going back to the Ricardo Torres fight (in 2005),” Steward said. Cotto knocked out Torres in the seventh round of a slugfest that saw both fighters decked.
“Then you look at Margarito, Pacquiao, Clottey, Zab Judah, (Shane) Mosley, in all of those fights he suffered a lot of damage,” Steward said.
That worry has been tempered because Cotto, according to Steward, has had a marvelous training camp in Tampa, Fla.
“When I worked with him, in two weeks I could not believe what I saw,” Steward said. “He looked fantastic.
“What I have seen, I will be honest with you, I was shocked. After a few weeks, he was boxing 10, 12 rounds without any problems.”
Steward said a war-torn fighter often experiences a deterioration of coordination and reflexes, as well as psychological scars.
“But I did not see that from Miguel,” he said.
Steward did notice Cotto had mechanical issues with his balance, which rendered him incapable of throwing more than one or two punches without losing it.
“I made him just drop his hands and dance back and forth with his weight evenly balanced and he caught onto it and from that point on he went to a whole other level,” Steward said.
Cotto, still just 29, likes what he sees from himself in that regard.
“My balance was awful before this camp,” he said, “and now it is much better than we expected. We trained very hard with the balance and now we can throw punches and maintain the balance.”
Being balanced is fine. But when Cotto was asked more than once this week during a conference call if he believes he is the same fighter he was a couple of years ago, he was brief.
“I wouldn’t be in this position right now, going to Yankee Stadium without that and fighting against a world champion like Yuri Foreman,” Cotto said.
Cotto and Foreman are promoted by Arum, which is one reason why Cotto is going to fight for another title in spite of his recent losses to Margarito and Pacquiao.
Another reason is Cotto has sold more fight tickets in New York City – 93,000 – than any fighter over the past 10 years, meaning this is a money-making proposition. Thirty thousand fans are expected.
Cotto wouldn’t even acknowledge his TKO losses to Margarito and Pacquiao were that bad.
“When you talk about devastating knockouts, you talk about the guy never getting up,” he said.
The final answer will come from seeing how Cotto reacts next Saturday.
On paper, it might seem Foreman (28-0) is the perfect opponent for Cotto because he has only eight knockouts in 28 fights. But Foreman is a junior middleweight, a weight at which Cotto (34-2, 27 KOs) has not toiled.
“We can talk all we want, but we will have to find out in the real fight,” Steward said. “But I feel extremely confident he will come up with a great performance.”
One worthy of Yankees tradition, Cotto suggested.
“I am going to feel like a Yankee on this night,” he said. “I am going to feel like Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter.”
Only if he’s doing most of the hitting.
