By Marcus Richardson: Floyd Mayweather Jr. recently allowed one of his sparring sessions to be shown on the net as he gets prepared for his May 5th fight against WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. All I can say after watching the session is that Cotto has got a real chance of beating Mayweather if he can jab a lot and take the fight to Mayweather.
The sparring partner was landing a lot of shots against Mayweather, who looked slower than he had in the past when reacting to shots. Mayweather still has his fast hands but he’s not as fast as he once was and he’s a lot easier to hit. If Cotto can take Mayweather shots and not back off, he has a real chance of beating Mayweather. Cotto is bigger than the guys that Mayweather has been fighting recently and he’s got more power as well with every shot.
Mayweather defeated Victor Ortiz last September by a 4th round TKO, but that win was tainted because Ortiz’s hands were down by his sides after he had apologized to Mayweather for head-butting moments earlier in the round. Cotto won’t do anything crazy like dropping his guard and letting Mayweather get in free shots. Mayweather Jr. will be forced to go toe-to-toe if he wants to beat Cotto and I think that’s something that favors Cotto if he can land his big shots the way that the sparring partner was able to land against Mayweather.
Cotto has to use the right balance of boxing and slugging to beat Mayweather. He can’t just go out and try and take Mayweather’s head with every shot and expect to win because that won’t work. He needs to use a good balance of boxing and slugging kind of like how Cotto did in his recent win over Antonio Margarito last December.