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By William Dettloff
Most of us thought something was wrong with Miguel Cotto when he started backing up against Shane Mosley in the ninth round Saturday night. After all, he appeared to have won a majority of the early and middle rounds by doing what we’re used to seeing him do: applying heavy pressure behind thumping left jabs and an array of powerpunches.
He had to be hurt somehow; he must have broken a hand or gotten winded; or, as the HBO broadcast team suggested, suffered a cut inside his mouth that was bothering him. Maybe Mosley had rattled him. Whatever it was, it was bad; Emanuel Steward offered that he couldn’t see Cotto lasting the distance.
Cotto cleared it up after his unanimous decision win (I had him winning, 116-113) when he casually told Max Kellerman he decided to move and box to make the fight "easier." Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn’t. But he took the 10th on my card and clearly won the 11th mostly by letting Mosley come to him and then countering with heavy, accurate punches.
Cotto’s reply to Kellerman revealed that he doesn’t see himself as the rest of us see him. He hasn’t forgotten, as the rest of us had, how he beat Mohamad Abdulaev, Randall Bailey, and Kelson Pinto, three strong, heavy-handed guys.
He didn’t go to war with them. He picked them apart nice and slow, and when they were ready to go—and not a moment before—he got rid of them.
Cotto doesn’t see himself as a straight-ahead mauler. He seems himself as a well-schooled, versatile boxer-puncher who, throughout his career, has shown he possesses the unusual ability to outbox punchers and outslug boxers. That’s how we should see him too.
In a little over three weeks, Floyd Mayweather, the world welterweight champion, will meet Ricky Hatton. A boxer against a puncher. If there is any justice, Cotto will get the winner. I say he beats either one of them and without much difficulty. Too good a puncher for Mayweather, too good a boxer for Hatton.
It’s a hard combination to beat.
Some miscellaneous thoughts from last week:
If there’s a less just decision the rest of the year than the one that made lightweight champ Joel Casamayor a winner over Jose Armando Santa Cruz, it’s going to be considerably harder to defend this business to your boxing-hating friends and family. Off TV, I had Santa Cruz winning by a very large margin. Casamayor can’t fight at all anymore, and to make matters worse, apparently has a glass elbow.
Santa Cruz’ trainer, Rudy Hernandez, I think set some kind of record for most F-Bombs dropped in a single 60-second rest period. He made Enzo Calzaghe sound like Tipper Gore. Kudos, Rudy.
Good for Kellerman for articulating to Steward the logic behind respecting championship lineage. And shame on Steward for defending the existence of multiple "champions" in every weight class.
Don’t feel too badly for Carlos Maussa over his first-round knockout loss to Victor Ortiz. He’s always got his acting career to fall back on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T24OyTvgB68.
Some random thoughts concerning The Contender finale:
Sakio Bika’s stoppage of Jaidon Codrington in a highly entertaining brawl completely justified having sat through what in my view was a mostly abysmal season.
Anyone else think Codrington should have fought off the ropes the whole way? He landed his best punches—including the left hook that dropped Bika in the first round—in that posture and could neither hold off Bika outside nor stay with him inside. But his faster hands gave him opportunities to land off the ropes when Bika opened up.
My apologies for spelling Pepe Correa's name wrong in last week’s column. By the way, Correa’s between-rounds instructions to Bika were typically nonsensical, but colorfully delivered. Good for him.
I know the stoppage made it a moot point, but why didn’t referee **** Flaherty dock Bika a point or two for twice hitting Codrington while Codrington was on the deck in the first round?
The death of literary icon Norman Mailer represents not just the loss of another member of the important generation of post-World War II American fiction writers (the great Kurt Vonnegut died in April), but also of a longtime friend of the fight game. He frequently came across as a buffoon, maybe most recently in the Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings, which chronicled the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in 1974. But Mailer took real risks—on the page and in life, and wrote well and passionately of our sport. We all are richer for having read him.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
Most of us thought something was wrong with Miguel Cotto when he started backing up against Shane Mosley in the ninth round Saturday night. After all, he appeared to have won a majority of the early and middle rounds by doing what we’re used to seeing him do: applying heavy pressure behind thumping left jabs and an array of powerpunches.
He had to be hurt somehow; he must have broken a hand or gotten winded; or, as the HBO broadcast team suggested, suffered a cut inside his mouth that was bothering him. Maybe Mosley had rattled him. Whatever it was, it was bad; Emanuel Steward offered that he couldn’t see Cotto lasting the distance.
Cotto cleared it up after his unanimous decision win (I had him winning, 116-113) when he casually told Max Kellerman he decided to move and box to make the fight "easier." Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn’t. But he took the 10th on my card and clearly won the 11th mostly by letting Mosley come to him and then countering with heavy, accurate punches.
Cotto’s reply to Kellerman revealed that he doesn’t see himself as the rest of us see him. He hasn’t forgotten, as the rest of us had, how he beat Mohamad Abdulaev, Randall Bailey, and Kelson Pinto, three strong, heavy-handed guys.
He didn’t go to war with them. He picked them apart nice and slow, and when they were ready to go—and not a moment before—he got rid of them.
Cotto doesn’t see himself as a straight-ahead mauler. He seems himself as a well-schooled, versatile boxer-puncher who, throughout his career, has shown he possesses the unusual ability to outbox punchers and outslug boxers. That’s how we should see him too.
In a little over three weeks, Floyd Mayweather, the world welterweight champion, will meet Ricky Hatton. A boxer against a puncher. If there is any justice, Cotto will get the winner. I say he beats either one of them and without much difficulty. Too good a puncher for Mayweather, too good a boxer for Hatton.
It’s a hard combination to beat.
Some miscellaneous thoughts from last week:
If there’s a less just decision the rest of the year than the one that made lightweight champ Joel Casamayor a winner over Jose Armando Santa Cruz, it’s going to be considerably harder to defend this business to your boxing-hating friends and family. Off TV, I had Santa Cruz winning by a very large margin. Casamayor can’t fight at all anymore, and to make matters worse, apparently has a glass elbow.
Santa Cruz’ trainer, Rudy Hernandez, I think set some kind of record for most F-Bombs dropped in a single 60-second rest period. He made Enzo Calzaghe sound like Tipper Gore. Kudos, Rudy.
Good for Kellerman for articulating to Steward the logic behind respecting championship lineage. And shame on Steward for defending the existence of multiple "champions" in every weight class.
Don’t feel too badly for Carlos Maussa over his first-round knockout loss to Victor Ortiz. He’s always got his acting career to fall back on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T24OyTvgB68.
Some random thoughts concerning The Contender finale:
Sakio Bika’s stoppage of Jaidon Codrington in a highly entertaining brawl completely justified having sat through what in my view was a mostly abysmal season.
Anyone else think Codrington should have fought off the ropes the whole way? He landed his best punches—including the left hook that dropped Bika in the first round—in that posture and could neither hold off Bika outside nor stay with him inside. But his faster hands gave him opportunities to land off the ropes when Bika opened up.
My apologies for spelling Pepe Correa's name wrong in last week’s column. By the way, Correa’s between-rounds instructions to Bika were typically nonsensical, but colorfully delivered. Good for him.
I know the stoppage made it a moot point, but why didn’t referee **** Flaherty dock Bika a point or two for twice hitting Codrington while Codrington was on the deck in the first round?
The death of literary icon Norman Mailer represents not just the loss of another member of the important generation of post-World War II American fiction writers (the great Kurt Vonnegut died in April), but also of a longtime friend of the fight game. He frequently came across as a buffoon, maybe most recently in the Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings, which chronicled the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in 1974. But Mailer took real risks—on the page and in life, and wrote well and passionately of our sport. We all are richer for having read him.
Bill Dettloff can be contacted at dettloff@ptd.net.
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