Drawing first blood was not enough for a spirited Miguel Cotto, who dropped a unanimous but competitive decision to Floyd Mayweather, Jr., on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Final scores were 117-111, 118-110, and 118-110, fairly wide tallies for a fight with so much two-way action.
Compared to all the stalling, spoiling, and snuggling that goes on among headliners these days, Mayweather-Cotto was as ferocious as the Battle of Thermopylae. It was a pleasure to watch two world-class professionals in the ring working hard at their craft. Ultimately, Mayweather, even at 35, was just too good for Cotto, and he is simply too good for anyone else under 154 pounds.
Cotto, who was thought to be looking at the bottom of the hill, fought like a man unused to the idea that he is no longer at the top. For the most part, the Puerto Rican veteran surprisingly pressed Mayweather to initiate exchanges. This strategy drove Mayweather, 151, to the ropes, where Cotto let go with both hands. Every time Cotto banged away at Mayweather against the ropes in the first few rounds, however, ?Money? would pick him apart with sharp counters. In the middle rounds, Cotto seemed to adjust by varying the speed of his combinations, mixing rapid fire salvos with hard single shots. Throughout the fight, his punches were shorter and tighter than usual?perhaps the handiwork of Pedro Diaz??allowing him to hit Mayweather with more frequency than anyone has since Jose Luis Castillo in 2002.
Mayweather took his share of punches while in his customary defensive posture?and suffered a bloody nose for his troubles?but he outscored Cotto, 154, in close quarters by a significant margin. When the fight moved into ring center, Mayweather worked well behind his jab and ripped uppercuts at Cotto, who has a tendency to lean forward when advancing. Although Cotto did a good job of keeping his guard tight, there were moments when he found himself caught in a dead zone?standing within striking distance of Mayweather without any apparent purpose?and Mayweather scored with some imaginative combinations. Chopping rights on the inside were replaced by roundhouse rights from the perimeter, and Mayweather landed a series of them in the fourth round.
Showing the kind of determination that has made him a model prizefighter for most of his career, Cotto rebounded to work Mayweather over in the fifth. No longer the terrorizing body puncher of years ago, Cotto nonetheless put in some well placed shots to the ribs against Mayweather. In the sixth, however, Cotto, Caguas, Puerto Rico, backed off and chose to fight from the outside, forcing Mayweather, Las Vegas, Nevada, into the role of aggressor. Did Cotto stifle his own momentum with this bit of filibustering?
Eventually, the pace caught up to Cotto?who was in overdrive most of the first eight rounds just to stay even with Mayweather?and he faded over the last quarter of the fight. He did some good work in the 8th, but from the 9th to the 12th, Mayweather landed the cleaner shots, although Cotto scored with some of his own blows, including a hard, improvised left that seemed to startle Mayweather. In the 12th, Mayweather shook Cotto to his toes with a jarring uppercut, and Cotto, 37-3 (30), looked like he was tipsy for a moment, but he recovered to last the distance.
Despite landing numerous flush shots from bell to bell, Mayweather could not do any significant damage to Cotto, who has come out of previous fights looking like a man who had fallen headfirst down a steep ravine. Maybe fighting at junior middleweight?and the oversized gloves he was wearing?had something to do with that. Early in the fight, a Nevada inspector tried to place a strip of tape over his gloves between rounds and Mayweather refused. Between the handwraps?likely soaked with sweat?the 10-ounce gloves, and the tape, Mayweather probably had close to a pound on each wrist by the time the middle rounds came by.
Judging from his inconsistency on Saturday night, Mayweather, now in his 16th year as a professional, appears to be slowing down. He alternated between standup boxing, dancing on the perimeter, counterpunching, pressuring, infighting, and his rope-a-dope shtick?often in the same round. Call it versatility if you want, but Mayweather may be at that point in his career where it is simply harder to do what he used to do dependably. Even so, whatever he does have remaining will be more than enough for most.
Unlike other faux superstars whose fights are as interesting as webinars on agricultural law, Mayweather, now 43-0 (26), put on a good show on Saturday night. Credit Cotto for having something to do with that, of course, but we have seen many other headliners go through any lengths to shut down the possibility of action between the ropes. And, unless he has slipped even more than is apparent, Mayweather could have done so as well.
A deadly combination of boorish and boring when reality TV crews or velvet ropes are around, Mayweather has been working harder to dramatize himself in the ring. This is where it counts, of course, no matter what delirious Tweeters?many of whom seem to suffer from profound emotional disorders?and fighthype.com want you to believe. Justin Beiber, Triple H, 50 Cent?all that is for celebrity hounds to lap up. Soon to replace his razzmatazz between the ropes with an ambiance closer to that of Alcatraz, Mayweather will have a summer to remember for all the wrong reasons. We can only hope he gives us the right reasons to remember him by in the future.
