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By Robert Morales
Every time I drive into Hollywood these days, I think of the news conference held there earlier this year in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre promoting the May mega fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
As I walked up to the jam-packed area that day, I decided to stay across the street and observe. I happened upon my good friend and fellow boxing writer, Carlos Arias, of the Orange County Register.
“Dude,” he tells me, “Marisa Tomei was just in the Starbucks right there getting some coffee.” The counter he pointed to inside Starbucks was less than 20 feet away from where he had been standing. So I asked him, “Well, did you go over there and talk to her, get her autograph?” Much to my dismay, he says, “No.” What a maroon.
Well, anyway, there were no such star sightings Monday at House of Blues on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. But there was another kind of star, and his name was Miguel Cotto. Cotto and “Sugar” Shane Mosley were on hand for the final stop of a press tour promoting their Nov. 10 welterweight title fight at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Plenty of people talked to Cotto (including Arias). Plenty of people talked about Cotto, too. They spoke of his brutal body punching, of his knack for getting up from a knockdown to rise with vicious intentions, of his want to destroy every opponent he encounters.
“I like that he is what I consider the old-time fighter,” said Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank Inc., Cotto’s longtime promoter. “He's a throwback fighter. We don't see these guys anymore. We see guys dance with stars and get $50 million dollars, not engage and go to war like Hagler did and Leonard did, and Hearns. When he (Cotto) gets somebody hurt, he's going for it. He's going to take a couple shots on the way, but he's not giving up. That is what the gladiators of yesteryear did. If it was (lightweight great Carlos) Ortiz, if it was Sugar Ray Robinson, if it went back to (Rocky) Marciano.
“Those guys gave it their all in the ring and went for it and went to get their opponents
out. Miguel has that. He has that ability and that instinct that he's going to do it. He's got an amazing left hook and he's got incredible ring generalship. He knows how to control the ring. Anybody that likes Miguel Cotto is somebody who is a purist about boxing, enjoys somebody who's going to go out there and fight. And that's what he is.”
If it seems like duBoef might have gotten carried away with his assessment of Cotto, it’s difficult to blame him. He is the one, after all, who discovered Cotto. But whereas Lana Turner was discovered working at a malt shop in Hollywood, duBoef came across Cotto at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Cotto, of Puerto Rico, lost in the first round to Uzbekistan’s Mohamad Abdulaev, who went on to win the gold medal at light welterweight. But duBoef came back singing Cotto’s praises, saying that in his opinion Cotto was going to become one of the greatest fighters in history. Bob Arum, duBoef’s stepfather and chairman of the board of Top Rank, said he took what his stepson said with a grain of salt because of Cotto’s early exit. Today? Well, Arum is more than sold.
“Todd had seen something and he showed (Top Rank matchmaker) Bruce Trampler some of the films of Miguel as an amateur and we determined if there was one guy that we wanted to sign out of that whole international class, it was Miguel Cotto,” Arum said. “And we succeeded in signing him because we believed that Miguel would not only become champion, but would be the best pound-for-pound fighter and would go down in history as one of the greatest fighters of all-time. So far Miguel has done everything that we could have dreamed of and could have expected.”
Cotto, just 26, turned pro in February 2001 and has compiled a record of 30-0 with 25 knockouts. He has won world championships in the junior welterweight and welterweight divisions and is 10-0 with nine knockouts in title fights. One of his title defenses at junior welterweight came against the aforementioned Abdulaev in June 2005 at Madison Square Garden. Cotto got revenge and then some when he stopped Abdulaev in the ninth round. But Cotto did more than that.
“Not only did he knock Abdulaev out, but he effectively ended the boxing career of Abdulaev,” Arum said. “He is a tremendous fighter. He is the strongest guy that I have ever seen at 140 or 147 because he not only beats his opponents, but he hurts them badly and generally sends them into retirement.”
Abdulaev fought just once more after being taken apart by Cotto, retiring at the age of 32.
Arum, of course, is Cotto’s promoter and we would expect him to be generous when sizing up his protégé. But even Mosley seemed genuinely impressed with the way Cotto has gone about his business.
“Miguel Cotto is a very determined fighter,” Mosley said. “He's very strong and strong-willed. When he fights he goes out there to fight the whole fight 100 percent. Whether you knock him down, he's willing to fight. He sets that steady pace, he's right there and he's coming to attack, which makes him a very difficult type of fighter to fight.”
This was not a fighter lauding his opponent to sell pay-per-view buys. The look in Mosley’s eyes, the expression on his face, told a group of reporters that he meant every word.
Mosley is promoted by Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. The company’s matchmaker, Eric Gomez, has gone on record questioning Cotto’s chin because he has tasted the canvas. But on Monday, even Gomez talked in positive tones about Cotto, saying that Cotto is even more impressive as a 147-pound welterweight.
“He’s shown that he looks stronger, maybe faster, at 147,” Gomez said. Therein lies the key for Cotto, and the ultimate legacy he could establish. Indeed, he was solid as a 140-pound junior welterweight, but he struggled mightily to make the weight in his last several fights there. According to his personal velocity trainer, John Park, Cotto is much better off at 147, and he said that Cotto is so well put together, he could see him moving to the 154-pound junior middleweight division and being successful there.
“He could easily go up because unlike most boxers, he's got a lot of density in his legs,” Park said. “He's got very, very strong legs. You look at most boxers, even the heavyweights, they're pretty lean throughout the legs. But he's got very muscular calves and thighs and butt, where all the power of the punch comes from. So, he's carrying a lot of mass in that area.”
The way Cotto goes to the body, it’s almost scary to think about what he could do to an opponent’s liver in the junior middleweight division. It hurts just thinking about it.
With all this said, there are still plenty of experts not completely sold on Cotto. Like Gomez, they wonder about his chin. They say that his record notwithstanding, his list of opponents pales in comparison to that of Mosley, who has two victories over De La Hoya on his ledger. Arum said that in a way, it’s understandable why more boxing writers than not are picking Mosley to take Cotto’s title. But, he added, those doing so are missing the boat.
“When the established fighter, Mosley, who after all has two victories over Oscar, has fought a lot of big names, is fighting against a guy who you can make the argument is untested … I mean, yeah, Miguel beat Zab Judah and Ricardo Torres, but, so they tend to go with the established guy,” Arum said. “The big mistake that they’re all making, when he was fighting at 140, particularly in the latter stages of him holding the 140-pound belt, he was killing himself making the weight. And the (personal velocity) experts that we brought in said that they wouldn't be involved if he continued to fight at 140 because he was burning up muscle. So once we moved him to 147, he was a complete different fighter.”
Cotto, who is 3-0 with three knockouts at welterweight, insisted on doing his interviews in English on Monday. He is learning the language, but his answers were short and a little broken at times. There was one sentence he had no trouble with at all, however. He knows full well he still has to prove himself to the non-believers, so when asked if this was the biggest fight of his career, he did not hesitate.
“Yes,” Cotto said, “because Mosley has fought with a lot of the top fighters in the world. So after this fight the people are going to see what Miguel Cotto is.”
Cotto’s a great fighter. That’s what he is. And he’s only just begun.
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*waits for Addison's reply*
Every time I drive into Hollywood these days, I think of the news conference held there earlier this year in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre promoting the May mega fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
As I walked up to the jam-packed area that day, I decided to stay across the street and observe. I happened upon my good friend and fellow boxing writer, Carlos Arias, of the Orange County Register.
“Dude,” he tells me, “Marisa Tomei was just in the Starbucks right there getting some coffee.” The counter he pointed to inside Starbucks was less than 20 feet away from where he had been standing. So I asked him, “Well, did you go over there and talk to her, get her autograph?” Much to my dismay, he says, “No.” What a maroon.
Well, anyway, there were no such star sightings Monday at House of Blues on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. But there was another kind of star, and his name was Miguel Cotto. Cotto and “Sugar” Shane Mosley were on hand for the final stop of a press tour promoting their Nov. 10 welterweight title fight at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Plenty of people talked to Cotto (including Arias). Plenty of people talked about Cotto, too. They spoke of his brutal body punching, of his knack for getting up from a knockdown to rise with vicious intentions, of his want to destroy every opponent he encounters.
“I like that he is what I consider the old-time fighter,” said Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank Inc., Cotto’s longtime promoter. “He's a throwback fighter. We don't see these guys anymore. We see guys dance with stars and get $50 million dollars, not engage and go to war like Hagler did and Leonard did, and Hearns. When he (Cotto) gets somebody hurt, he's going for it. He's going to take a couple shots on the way, but he's not giving up. That is what the gladiators of yesteryear did. If it was (lightweight great Carlos) Ortiz, if it was Sugar Ray Robinson, if it went back to (Rocky) Marciano.
“Those guys gave it their all in the ring and went for it and went to get their opponents
out. Miguel has that. He has that ability and that instinct that he's going to do it. He's got an amazing left hook and he's got incredible ring generalship. He knows how to control the ring. Anybody that likes Miguel Cotto is somebody who is a purist about boxing, enjoys somebody who's going to go out there and fight. And that's what he is.”
If it seems like duBoef might have gotten carried away with his assessment of Cotto, it’s difficult to blame him. He is the one, after all, who discovered Cotto. But whereas Lana Turner was discovered working at a malt shop in Hollywood, duBoef came across Cotto at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Cotto, of Puerto Rico, lost in the first round to Uzbekistan’s Mohamad Abdulaev, who went on to win the gold medal at light welterweight. But duBoef came back singing Cotto’s praises, saying that in his opinion Cotto was going to become one of the greatest fighters in history. Bob Arum, duBoef’s stepfather and chairman of the board of Top Rank, said he took what his stepson said with a grain of salt because of Cotto’s early exit. Today? Well, Arum is more than sold.
“Todd had seen something and he showed (Top Rank matchmaker) Bruce Trampler some of the films of Miguel as an amateur and we determined if there was one guy that we wanted to sign out of that whole international class, it was Miguel Cotto,” Arum said. “And we succeeded in signing him because we believed that Miguel would not only become champion, but would be the best pound-for-pound fighter and would go down in history as one of the greatest fighters of all-time. So far Miguel has done everything that we could have dreamed of and could have expected.”
Cotto, just 26, turned pro in February 2001 and has compiled a record of 30-0 with 25 knockouts. He has won world championships in the junior welterweight and welterweight divisions and is 10-0 with nine knockouts in title fights. One of his title defenses at junior welterweight came against the aforementioned Abdulaev in June 2005 at Madison Square Garden. Cotto got revenge and then some when he stopped Abdulaev in the ninth round. But Cotto did more than that.
“Not only did he knock Abdulaev out, but he effectively ended the boxing career of Abdulaev,” Arum said. “He is a tremendous fighter. He is the strongest guy that I have ever seen at 140 or 147 because he not only beats his opponents, but he hurts them badly and generally sends them into retirement.”
Abdulaev fought just once more after being taken apart by Cotto, retiring at the age of 32.
Arum, of course, is Cotto’s promoter and we would expect him to be generous when sizing up his protégé. But even Mosley seemed genuinely impressed with the way Cotto has gone about his business.
“Miguel Cotto is a very determined fighter,” Mosley said. “He's very strong and strong-willed. When he fights he goes out there to fight the whole fight 100 percent. Whether you knock him down, he's willing to fight. He sets that steady pace, he's right there and he's coming to attack, which makes him a very difficult type of fighter to fight.”
This was not a fighter lauding his opponent to sell pay-per-view buys. The look in Mosley’s eyes, the expression on his face, told a group of reporters that he meant every word.
Mosley is promoted by Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. The company’s matchmaker, Eric Gomez, has gone on record questioning Cotto’s chin because he has tasted the canvas. But on Monday, even Gomez talked in positive tones about Cotto, saying that Cotto is even more impressive as a 147-pound welterweight.
“He’s shown that he looks stronger, maybe faster, at 147,” Gomez said. Therein lies the key for Cotto, and the ultimate legacy he could establish. Indeed, he was solid as a 140-pound junior welterweight, but he struggled mightily to make the weight in his last several fights there. According to his personal velocity trainer, John Park, Cotto is much better off at 147, and he said that Cotto is so well put together, he could see him moving to the 154-pound junior middleweight division and being successful there.
“He could easily go up because unlike most boxers, he's got a lot of density in his legs,” Park said. “He's got very, very strong legs. You look at most boxers, even the heavyweights, they're pretty lean throughout the legs. But he's got very muscular calves and thighs and butt, where all the power of the punch comes from. So, he's carrying a lot of mass in that area.”
The way Cotto goes to the body, it’s almost scary to think about what he could do to an opponent’s liver in the junior middleweight division. It hurts just thinking about it.
With all this said, there are still plenty of experts not completely sold on Cotto. Like Gomez, they wonder about his chin. They say that his record notwithstanding, his list of opponents pales in comparison to that of Mosley, who has two victories over De La Hoya on his ledger. Arum said that in a way, it’s understandable why more boxing writers than not are picking Mosley to take Cotto’s title. But, he added, those doing so are missing the boat.
“When the established fighter, Mosley, who after all has two victories over Oscar, has fought a lot of big names, is fighting against a guy who you can make the argument is untested … I mean, yeah, Miguel beat Zab Judah and Ricardo Torres, but, so they tend to go with the established guy,” Arum said. “The big mistake that they’re all making, when he was fighting at 140, particularly in the latter stages of him holding the 140-pound belt, he was killing himself making the weight. And the (personal velocity) experts that we brought in said that they wouldn't be involved if he continued to fight at 140 because he was burning up muscle. So once we moved him to 147, he was a complete different fighter.”
Cotto, who is 3-0 with three knockouts at welterweight, insisted on doing his interviews in English on Monday. He is learning the language, but his answers were short and a little broken at times. There was one sentence he had no trouble with at all, however. He knows full well he still has to prove himself to the non-believers, so when asked if this was the biggest fight of his career, he did not hesitate.
“Yes,” Cotto said, “because Mosley has fought with a lot of the top fighters in the world. So after this fight the people are going to see what Miguel Cotto is.”
Cotto’s a great fighter. That’s what he is. And he’s only just begun.
----------------------------
*waits for Addison's reply*
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