Miguel Cotto: What Might Have Been
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Miguel Cotto is not a pitiable figure. He has made millions upon millions of dollars, he has risen to levels of popularity that few fighters obtain and he's a legitimately excellent boxer who has accomplished a great deal in the ring. But in advance of his big fight this weekend against fellow top welterweight Joshua Clottey, I got to thinking about how much different things would be for him if not for one grueling, possibly tainted loss.
It was a mere two fights ago that Cotto lost by 11th round technical knockout to Antonio Margarito. It was in Margarito's very next fight that he was found with loaded gloves, whereupon his license was revoked for at least a year in the United States and questions arose about whether that was the first time Margarito had cheated. Cotto, for his part, suspects Margarito's gloves were loaded in their fight. It was Cotto's first loss.
Cotto, had he won that fight, would have been in line for a bout with Oscar De La Hoya. De La Hoya said he wanted to winner of Cotto-Margarito, and he very much had Cotto in mind. When Margarito won, although the victory made him an elite fighter and one of the most popular boxers ther was, De La Hoya turned his attention elsewhere, to Manny Pacquiao. The significantly smaller Pacquiao knocked out De La Hoya, a major stepping stone to where Pacquiao is now in his career.
Take a look at how things went after Cotto's loss. Following his defeat of Cotto, Margarito became a huge star, whipping the Mexican fans who already liked him into a nationalistic fervor as a result of him notching a win in the historic Mexican-Puerto Rican boxing rivalry. Is there any question that Cotto's Puerto Rican fan base, which was at that point very dedicated to the fighter but hadn't embraced him with the passion it had Felix Trinidad, would have been whipped up into new levels of its own nationalistic fervor? Complicating matters is that Cotto, defensibly or not (I say defensibly), took a knee twice to avoid Margarito's punishment, and appeared to signal that he wanted the fight halted -- the kind of move that doesn't go over so well in boxing's macho culture, amplified further by the Latino macho culture. In his next fight, Cotto drew a smaller audience than he had in the past in New York City, although some of that probably had to do with the choice of opponent -- no-hoper Michael Jennings -- driving down demand in seeing the bout. At minimum, though, there's cause to wonder whether the Margarito loss hurt Cotto's standings with his fans, and it's almost certainly the case that the Margarito loss hurt Cotto's chances of multiplying his popularity index with his people.
So let's revise history and say that Cotto is glorified in victory over Margarito and poised to fight De La Hoya. There is no guarantee that De La Hoya wouldn't have chosen Pacquiao for his next fight anyhow, since the fight had been discussed as a hypothetical option for a good long while. But certainly, a wildly popular Cotto has a very good argument for getting De La Hoya next. As I said, De La Hoya had indicated he'd like the winner of Cotto-Margarito, and it was clear he far preferred Cotto in that equation. So Cotto more than likely would have gotten the assignment. And is there anyone who thinks Cotto wouldn't have knocked out De La Hoya the same way or yet more ruthlessly than Pacquiao did? It's possible De La Hoya wouldn't have been forced down to welterweight the way he was by Pacquiao, and that De La Hoya could have forced Cotto to come up to junior middleweight, where his body wouldn't have been as drained as it was for the Pacquiao fight. But Cotto would still have been the betting favorite, and he would have been my pick.
So, again, let's assume Cotto beats De La Hoya in that fight. Surely, the achievement wouldn't have gotten Cotto as much love as it did Pacquiao, because Pacquiao's achievement was burnished by the fact that he had to jump two weight classes, and Cotto would have jumped one at most. But as has happened for every fighter who beats De La Hoya, Cotto would have become a household name. He would have been sitting in the catbird seat, much as Pacquiao is now. People wouldn't be clamoring for Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather, Jr. They'd be clamoring more than ever before -- because they were clamoring for it before the Margarito fight -- for Cotto-Mayweather. And it just wouldn't be hardcore heads like me, or casual fans. It would be non-fans who'd be hearing about Cotto-Mayweather, the way those non-fans are hearing about Pacquiao-Mayweather these days.
I can't say that Cotto-Mayweather would have the same hypothetical heat as Pacquiao-Mayweather presently does, because even if Cotto had defeated Margarito and De La Hoya, it's not likely he would have moved into the #1 pound-for-pound spot Pacquiao inhabited even before he beat Oscar. Pacquiao would probably still by this point have knocked Ricky Hatton out, and his resume would still eclipse Cotto's. Pacquiao as the #1 man and Mayweather as the most recent #1 man is what gives Pacquiao-Mayweather much of its flavor. But Cotto-Mayweather would still probably be THE talk of the boxing world and beyond. We'd be fantasizing about top two welterweights, both undefeated, squaring off.
Circumstances are such that Cotto is still in line for a mega-fight of that level. For starters, much of boxing fandom has now cast a suspicious eye on Margarito, and many appear willing to give Cotto a pass for that loss and the nature of that loss. Rightly so. For another -- and perhaps related -- reason, Cotto's fan base shows signs of being at least as strong as it was before the Margarito loss. Madison Square Garden is heading toward a sellout crowd this weekend, and the reason ain't Clottey; a New York crowd waited in line fo hours today for the privilege of meeting Cotto, per the above photo. That's the kind of fan base that helps a man get big fights, because it translates into big money. If he beats Clottey, any remaining skepticism of Cotto would likely disappear.
But in the food chain at the crowded 140-147 pound range of boxing, Cotto isn't sitting at #1 or #2, like he might have been had things gone differently. Right now, that's Pacquiao and Mayweather. If Juan Manuel Marquez somehow beats Mayweather, one has to assume Marquez takes his spot in the #1 or #2 spot of the food chain. Cotto, promoted like Pacquiao by Bob Arum, may be Arum's preferred choice for a Pacquiao fight in October, but in reality Cotto's in a second tier in the junior welterweight/welterweight zone with Shane Mosley. Cotto isn't in the position to force the sport to bend to his wishes. He'll be counting on a lucky break -- or maybe he'll have to make a little luck of his own by defeating Clottey (a lower-reward/higher-risk opponent than he might otherwise have to face) and then, say, Mosley -- if he is to get the mega-est of the megafights anytime soon.
And all of this is contingent, by the way, on Cotto not being permanently diminished by the Margarito loss, of which Jennings was no test, because he wasn't an elite opponent. Clottey is a test of that -- and he's dangerous in his own right -- because he's certainly an elite foe. If Cotto loses in a way that suggests signs of slippage, we'll know that the one loss did far more harm to Cotto's career than we realized.
I often write in this space about how boxing fans are too quick to write a fighter off after one loss against elite competition. But make no mistake: Sometimes, one loss can dramatically alter the course of a fighter's career. Even if he's not dismissed and shunned unfairly. Even if that loss is shrouded in suspicion. It's not always just, cosmically speaking, but it is what it is.
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