By Gerardo Gomez: Last night at a sold out crowd at Madison Square Garden, Miguel Cotto displayed a beautiful boxing clinic to come up with a TKO victory over Antonio Margarito in the 10th round. The doctor stopped the fight with 3 seconds into the 10th round to prevent Margarito’s eye from getting worse. In my opinion, the fight should have kept on going. If Margarito and the referee wanted the fight to go on, I don’t see why the doctor had to stop it. There have been other boxer’s who have had their eyes worst than Margarito and have fought until the final bell. Margarito’s eye against Pacquiao was worst and Pawel Wolak’s first fight against Delvin Rodriguez was hugely inflamed and fought the rest of his fight.
The fight should have continued until the final bell. I would’ve rather seen Miguel Cotto win a unanimous decision and Margarito giving it his all rather than leave room for speculations. Some people will wonder what would have happen in the remainder 3 rounds. We will never know how the championship rounds would have turned out.
Miguel Cotto fought the perfect fight. Congratulations goes to his trainer for putting an excellent game plan. In my pre fight analysis, I wrote, “For Miguel Cotto to win his best chance is to outbox Margarito. He needs to out jab Margarito, throw 2-3 combinations and move away. I don’t see Cotto standing toe to toe with Margarito.” Cotto did exactly that. He displayed great boxing skills and was able to avoid most of Margarito’s punches. The fight was a carbon copy of their first fight with the difference being Cotto avoiding the mistakes from his first fight. We saw Cotto throw beautiful combinations and dance around Margarito. Cotto also was holding Margarito most of the fight, which we didn’t see that in the first fight. It was a tactic that worked to his advantage.
Margarito was unable to adapt to the new Cotto. He kept chasing him throughout the whole fight and never finding any openings to land his punches. There were couple times that he landed some solid punches. His best round was by far the 9th round in my opinion. He did connect couple good shots on Cotto, who appeared to be winding down.
Margarito needs to work on his defense a bit more and start his fights a little faster. He is notoriously known to be a slow starter and most of the time it doesn’t always end up favoring him. I will give Margarito credit for being a warrior and willing to lose his eyesight just to finish a fight. We saw it against Pacquiao and we could have seen it last night.
Antonio Margarito really needs to heal that eye. I would say he needs to take a least a year off if he wants to continue fighting. One thing that will make more sense is for him to think about retiring. He has been in some wars and at this point in his career there is not much left in him. There are a couple of fights that I would love to see him in. A fight against Ricardo Mayorga would be a great fight. Margarito vs Molina and even Margarito vs Wolak are solid fights but his best bet is really think about hanging up the gloves and/or healing that eye.
Miguel Cotto has couple of fights left in him. Bob Arum wants to put him against Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. I think it would be an okay fight but Cotto is too small to be a middleweight, unless Arum makes his signature catchweight fight, which would be ridiculous. Cotto has great fights ahead of him in the pack 154 division. Any fight against James Kirkland, El Perro Angulo, Carlos Molina, Erislandy Lara, Mayweather, Sergio Martinez and even Canelo Alvarez are good fights for him. If Mayweather vs Pacquiao does not happen and Mayweather is not willing to fight Sergio Martinez, we may end up seeing Mayweather vs Cotto on May 5, 2012.