by Geoffrey Ciani – This week’s edition of On the Ropes Boxing Radio featured predictions for the upcoming junior middleweight championship bout between Floyd Mayweather Junior and Miguel Cotto. Hostess Jenna J, heavyweight contender Chauncy Welliver, and yours truly all shared our views on the fight. Here is what we had to say:
JENNA J: This is a fight that everyone’s talking about. It’s had the 24/7 series to promote it: Floyd Mayweather Junior versus Miguel Cotto for the WBA junior middleweight championship of the world. You know I have no doubt with who’s going to win this fight. I honestly believe it will be Floyd Mayweather Junior, but I don’t think he’s going to have as easy of a time as a lot of people think he’s going to have. I think that Miguel Cotto is a very capable very strong fighter. He’s a guy that’s accustomed to 154 pounds. I think early on in this fight he can actually give Floyd Mayweather Junior some issues. I think he can even win a couple of the early rounds. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him win three of the first five rounds, but the one thing about Floyd Mayweather Junior is he figures out opponents. He’s a guy that constantly becomes harder to hit as the fight goes on because he learns about the fighter’s movements. He knows how to predict where the guy is going to throw a shot. As the fight goes on he gets stronger, he gets harder to hit, and I believe that’s where he’ll end up outclassing Miguel Cotto. I think over the last six rounds of that fight, I believe Floyd Mayweather Junior will be consistently landing on Miguel Cotto, I think he’ll be consistently beating him up, and I wouldn’t even be surprised if he scored a late stoppage, but I’m going to take Floyd Mayweather Junior by unanimous decision.
CHAUNCY WELLIVER: I see it the same way you do. I see it actually being a win for Mayweather, but a very tough fight. People forget, Miguel Cotto, he doesn’t have problems with boxers. He has problems with guys who bring a lot of pressure, like a Manny Pacquiao or an Antonio Margarito. But if you put a boxer in front of him, even though this is a different level, but a guy such as Alfonso Gomez or even a Shane Mosley, with guys out there boxing Miguel Cotto does extremely well. Now I’m not comparing Alfonso Gomez to Floyd Mayweather or even Shane Mosley, but he had a much easier time with boxers than brawlers. I see this being a competitive fight for a couple of rounds, but as you said I can see Mayweather just taking over in the later rounds. I can see Cotto being busted up, but I wouldn’t be totally shocked if there was a late round stoppage in this fight.
GEOFFREY CIANI: I actually firmly believe that there is going to be a late stoppage in this fight, and I think I see this one as a little more one-sided than you guys do. I just think right now Miguel Cotto’s two biggest weaknesses are (A) he’s easy to hit, and (B) he fades late in fights. This has always been something that’s plagued Cotto. Whether it was fight with Mosley, his fight with Clottey, his fight with Pacquiao, his fights with Margarito, both of them even though he won the rematch—Cotto just has a tendency to fade late, and that’s just not good against a guy like Floyd. The fact that he’s easy to hit, I think Floyd is going to be pot-shotting him at will and I don’t think that Cotto is going to offer much resistance. If Cotto is to win two rounds in this fight, I think it will happen early in the first four rounds or so, but I really don’t see Miguel Cotto having much success. There was an interesting thing Emanuel Steward said to us earlier when he said Floyd with the shoulder roll, he does a good job at nullifying right hands but that makes him a little more vulnerable to left hooks. Emanuel seems to think we might see some more of the vintage left hook to the body from Cotto, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen. I think Cotto’s going to be way too easy to hit, and one thing that I firmly believe also about Floyd is that he’s really coming into his own strength-wise, where the power on his shots in his last couple of fights, I think he could have stopped Shane Mosley if he threw one or two more punches together, and I think Shane Mosley is a lot more durable with a much better chin than Cotto has. Mosley I also believe has much better stamina than Cotto has. I just think that Floyd is not the guy when he first came up to 147 and was fighting guys like Zab Judah. I think that his power is going to be real. Cotto is not a real 154 pound guy anyway in my mind. I think Floyd’s going to put on a dominant effort and really win in lopsided fashion. I believe he will stop Cotto. I think the accumulation of punches or perhaps one of those sneaky punches that Cotto doesn’t see as he begins to tire, I like Floyd Mayweather by tenth round stoppage.”
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