Trout: I have to keep Cotto on the outside

By ESB - 11/26/2012 - Comments

By Paul Grunich: WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) isn’t taking any chances with the hard hitting Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) on Saturday night in their fight at Madison Square Garden in New York. Trout plans on using his jab to keep the 32-year-old Cotto at a safe distance where he’s a lot less harmful. Trout doesn’t want to get in any wars with Cotto where he could get lucky and score a knockout from one of his big power shots.

Trout said to RingTV “I’m going to have to keep him [Cotto] away from me, and there’s no better measuring stick then a jab. I have a pretty good jab, so using the jab will definitely be the key.”

Trout notes that Cotto has an excellent jab as well, and he fully expects cotto to be trying to use it against him in this fight. However, the 5’10” Trout has a big advantage in this fight in that he’s got a five inch reach advantage and a three inch height advantage. This means that Trout can minimize the amount of times he gets hit in this fight by staying far on the outside so that Cotto can’t land power shots or his jabs.

For Trout to have success with this game plan it’s going to require for him to move around the ring a lot because Cotto is used to being the shorter fighter in his bouts, and he knows how to cut off the ring well. Trout will have to possess busy fight in order to keep Cotto from cornering him and making him pay.

Trout sees this fight as his big chance to hit it big by defeating Cotto and getting some additional big money fights such as Saul Alvarez and possibly Floyd Mayweather Jr. Alvarez would seem like the more realistic option because he already wants to fight the winner, although he prefers to fight Cotto due to him being the much bigger name compared to Trout.