14.06.09 – By Madra Uladh – In a great display of heart and guts tonight, Miguel Cotto banished forever the ghost of Antonio Margarito. Loaded gloves or no loaded gloves, many thought that Margarito had taken too much out of Cotto and that his days at the elite level were at an end.
Tonight, Cotto showed grace and courage under great pressure to rally late for the win.
And Joshua Clottey, while loudly protesting the decision, will likely kick himself when he watches the tape. The fight was there for him to win heading into the championship rounds. Inexplicably, he dropped his output and allowed a weaker Cotto to steal eleven and twelve..
The fight began with a knockdown of Clottey from a stiff Cotto jab. This was mostly from being of balance as Clottey was perfectly timed while throwing his own shot. Aside from the knockdown, Clottey dominated the first two rounds. Cotto came on better in the third, but suffered a dreadful cut from a clash of heads that made the rest of his evening a trial. He went on to win the fourth round, but the cut was clearly bothering him.
After losing most of the fifth Cotto threw Clottey to the ground, an action that referee Mercante failed to notice was intentional and for the remainder of the round and most of the next round, Clottey was in some pain in his left knee as a result of this.
I give Cotto credit for not quitting at the end of rounds four, five or six. He probably knew he was ahead and with the accidental head-butt, it would have gone to the cards.
The seventh round was the most decisively one-sided of the fight for either fighter. Clottey landed some serious punishment on Cotto, ripping open the cut and peppering him with hard hooks and uppercuts. If Cotto was going to play the technical stoppage gambit, this was his last chance. It was at this point that he exorcised the demons of the Margarito fight.
Round eight and nine left Clottey in the driver’s seat, with fans wondering if he was headed for a KO victory or a UD. Then Cotto got re-energized and took the tenth round.
And in the championship rounds, while clearly much spent, he dug deep and danced away from Clottey, but leapt back in sporadically to throw weak but scoring shots at the challenger. This was Clottey’s chance to seal the deal, and he has only himself to blame that he didn’t turn up the heat a notch at such a critical juncture. He just wasn’t busy enough and failed to throw enough shots to win the rounds.
I scored the fight a draw. 114-113 for Cotto was a reasonable outcome. 115-112 was a bit of a stretch, and 116-111 was out to lunch.
In the post-fight interview, Clottey talked about the home-crowd judges and felt he clearly won. If the entire fight were judged as a single thirty-six minute round, it would be difficult to disagree with him. He landed more and cleaner punches, and was the aggressor for more of the fight.
But these events are scored on twelve individual rounds, and knockdowns count for an extra point. Clottey let the fight slip away in the eleventh and twelfth rounds, when he failed to go after the warrior Cotto with sufficient aggression. In dealing with the adversity of a serious cut, Cotto showed why he’s a great champion.
There was more than enough to and fro in this fight to justify a rematch.
But for now, Cotto remains the champion.
And deservedly so.