By Mark Vester
At Madison Square Garden in New York, WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (34-1, 27KOs) won a very tough twelve round decision over Joshua Clottey (35-3, 20KOs) in a very bloody fight. The scores were 116-111 for Cotto, 114-113 for Clottey and 115-112 for Cotto.
Both guys came out with the jab. The round was close with both guys holding a very tight defense and trying to find openings. During the final ten seconds, a hard left jab was thrown by Cotto would catch Clottey as he came in, and send him down for a flash knockdown. During the second, Clottey was landing the better and more accurate punches but the fight continued to play out at a close pace. Cotto was able to do better in the third, but a clash of heads opened up a serious cut above his left eye.
During the fourth, a very bloody Cotto would begin to unload everything in his tank to batter Clottey with punches to the head and body. Clottey was never hurt but missed most of his counters in return. Cotto had trouble seeing some of the incoming punches due to the blood and he threw a lot of punches to keep Clottey from taking advantage. During the fifth, Clottey went down hard when Cotto tackled him during a clinch. He was down and took several minutes to recover. After the fifth was over, Clottey complained to the corner that his knee was hurting him bad.
The sixth round was a battle of wills. Clottey, with a hurt knee, went to the corner and Cotto would unload his punches once again. Cotto kept Clottey in the corner for most of the round and the two would trade a lot of punches with Cotto throwing and landing many more power punches.
Cotto's eye continued to give him trouble in the seventh. Clottey came on strong and dominated the action the round by using combinations to pound Cotto on the backfoot. The eight round was more of the same, Cotto's cut was clouding his vision. Clottey was coming forward and really busting Cotto up with combinations. Cotto tired his best to rally in the ninth round, but he was only able to explode with small combinations of punches when Clottey would stop throwing.
The tenth was slow, Clottey threw less and Cotto tried to move and stay away. During the final ten seconds, Cotto exploded with a big combination to push Clottey's head back. Cotto showed his heart in the eleventh by boxing his way to take the round by circling Clottey and using quick in and out combinations to prevent Clottey from getting off with too many punches.
During the twelfth, Cotto was getting off better in the first two minutes. During the action, Clottey went down from a punch to the back of the head. He was given a minute to recover. Clottey tired to unload in the final thirty seconds with Cotto ducking and moving away from most of the shots.
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