Email WhatsApp 2K Shares

By Dan Ambrose: The March 8th mega fight between former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) and former three division world champion Miguel Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) is almost a done deal, according to the WBC. The fight is expected to be announced in the coming days by Golden Boy Promotions.

Cotto and Canelo have met with Golden Boy in Los Angeles, and things are looking good.

Both fighters are kind of going into this fight in less than optimal conditions career-wise, since Canelo was beaten badly by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in losing a one-sided 12 round decision last September, and Cotto has lost two out of his last three fights. Cotto did win his last bout in beating Delvin Rodriguez by a 3rd round stoppage last October, but we’re not talking about a high level fighter here with him. There’s a world of difference between Delvin Rodriguez and the other top 154 lb. contenders like Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout.

Cotto’s new trainer Freddie Roach believes he’s turned his career around by having Cotto use his left hook a lot more than he’s done in his last 5 bouts, but his success against Rodriguez would have come even if he didn’t use his left hook as much. Rodriguez was a guy that would have been stopped by Cotto in the first five rounds if he had thrown nothing but right hands, because he’s not in the same class as him. I think Cotto is roughly the same fighter he’s always been, but the only difference is he’s trained by Roach now and he believes that he’s improved.

This will be the first of three fights for Canelo in 2014, because he wants to fight on July 26th and November 22nd as well.

Canelo will need to use a lot of defense if he wants to beat Cotto because he doesn’t look so good when he’s taking body shots, as we saw in his fight with Trout last April. If there’s one thing that Cotto can do, he can throw body shots with major power and it’s difficult for anyone to take his body shots when he’s using his left hook. Canelo will not be able to stand in the pocket with Cotto in this fight because he’ll get hit with a body shot from the Puerto Rican and that’ll be all she wrote.

We saw how Canelo backed off from Trout for the remainder of the fight after getting hit by a hard body shot from Trout in the 4th. If someone like Trout, who isn’t known for his body punching, was able to put Canelo in the defensive mode for the last five rounds of the fight just imagine what Cotto will be able to do to Canelo once he starts hitting him to the body. The trick to beating Canelo is to throw to the body, not to the head. It’s a waste of time for Cotto to throw head shots against Canelo because the guy can absorb those kinds of shots quite well without showing signs of being hurt. But Canelo will not be able to do the same when he starts getting hit on the liver by Cotto.