By Lem Satterfield
According to legendary trainer, Manny Steward, the fight between Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 knockouts) and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KOs) will likely happen on December 4, at New York's Madison Square Garden. Steward hooked up with Cotto a few months ago and worked his corner as he won the WBA junior middleweight title from Yuri Foreman in Yankee Stadium.
"Well, it looks like it's going to happen, first of all. It's a very intriguing fight, and it looks like it's going to be at Madison Square Garden, too. I think that it will be at The Garden. They're getting ready for the fight," Steward said.
The overhead story of the fight will be the boxing rivalry between Mexico and Puerto Rico. But, Steward says there are several other stories in the background. Steward had at one time trained Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., who actually approached him earlier this year to train Julio Jr. A few weeks later Julio Jr. hired hall of fame trainer Freddie Roach.
"Well, when I was down at the Dallas Cowboys' Stadium for the [March 13] Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey fight, who comes over and comes over and grabs me on the shoulder, as if, like in desperation? 'Steward, Steward, you've got to help my son, he's got to help him. Big fight coming up with John Duddy,' and, 'give me your phone number please,'" Steward said.
"I just told him to give me a call, and I think, at the time, I was working on Wladimir Klitschko's fight with Eddie Chambers [12th-round knockout on March 20.] I think that he was unable to get in touch with me while I was over there in Germany, so I guess they decided to take him on over to Freddie's gym."
Steward said it's going to be strange to see the Julio Jr. on the other end of the ring, but he recently went through a similar situation two weeks ago in St. Louis when he trained Cornelius Bundrage for his title fight with Cory Spinks. Bundrage stopped Spinks to win the title. Steward had at one time trained Cory's father, former heavyweight champion Leon Spinks.
"It's going to be strange for me to be going into the ring against the son of one of the former fighters that I trained. I just had to do that [two weeks ago], with Cornelius Bundrage against Leon Spinks' son, Cory Spinks," Steward said,
"You know, Leon lived across the street from me in Detroit, so I took over as his manager and trainer for a while. I had him for three or four fights. The night before the fight with Bundrage, Leon was talking to me about it like, 'I never thought that you would be training someone to fight against my son.' I said, 'I bet that you never thought that you would have a son in this position either, did you?'"
Lem Satterfield is the boxing editor at AOL FanHouse and the news editor at BoxingScene.com.com. To read more from Lem Satterfield, go to AOL FanHouse by Clicking Here.
