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Regarding Miguel Cotto’s performance in his 12th round TKO victory against Ricardo Mayorga:
“I felt that he fought a good fight considering everything. It’s not easy to fight Mayorga. He’s physically a big guy. It looked like he picked up about twenty pounds or more, maybe thirty pounds from the weigh-in to the fight. He was in great shape for this particular fight and he takes a good punch and his style is very difficult to analyze and defend against. So it was a fight that I thought Miguel fought very good in. I was very satisfied with it. He boxed a little bit and he still had to have some exchanges, which he did, with Mayorga. He came back and closed the show with a knockout, so I’m satisfied.”
On whether he was surprised that Mayorga lasted until the 12th round:
“I was surprised that he was able to last, I was surprised at his ability to take a good head punch, and his total just mental determination. It was not just a fight that Mayorga was just fighting to win. He was looking at Cotto at being his entrance into winning the Lottery, because as he said if he won that fight he was going to be able to fight Manny Pacquiao, which maybe meant in excess of $10,000,000 which meant he would have been a multi-millionaire for the rest of his life. That’s why I think he prepared so hard for this fight, no so much just for Cotto but looking beyond Cotto, because he continued to mention that throughout the publicity tour. His promoter, Don King, and his whole camp were continuously talking about Pacquiao, Pacquiao. This is what they had to do to get the big mega-million dollar fight, so I think he took this fight very seriously and trained very well and was prepared for the fight.”
His views on the final round when Cotto stopped Mayorga:
“Well I noticed that the best rounds for Mayorga were when he Miguel backing up, even though Miguel was pretty good at ducking, and bobbing, and weaving, and slipping, and leaving Mayorga hung up in the ropes a lot of times and then all out of position. But still Mayorga had his best rounds when he had Miguel backing up. So I told him the last round to go out real tight and close and try to get into an exchange with him, because I thought even though Mayorga was throwing looping punches earlier they were even wider as the fight went on, and to try and beat him to the punch with short punches and to go in close, and that’s what he did.”
His views on a potential rematch between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito:
“Well that situation still is really not in my hands, but I feel that it’s the most logical fight to be made the way the business of boxing works. In particular in the case of Cotto, I can’t think of any other fight that’s realistically available right now based on the time schedule of all of the potential opponents for him. I think it’s a good possibility it’s going to take place, probably in the summer or late spring of this year. I think for the most part, Miguel has that same type attitude. I don’t think he’s necessarily fond of fighting but not out of fear of fighting him, but he just feels he does not deserve that opportunity of a super fight. But that’s just something we have to put aside.”
His views on Andy Lee’s performance in his 10th round knockout victory against Craig McEwan:
“Once I saw that video I was not that impressed with the performance. I looked at it and it was a fight where he physically looked not so strong and not so sure of himself. It was the weakest physically I had ever seen him look. He explained to me later on, but it’s not even worth going into. Anyway he said he was very weak going into the fight. Nevertheless you just got to go along with what happened, and what I saw was not an impressive victory even though it was a good victory. It didn’t leave that superstar quality that we were hoping to implore on the public in the fight. But he won the fight and I told him the main thing is to win. To come back after losing I guess eight and a half rounds and to knock a guy out in the final round is still impressive. It turned out to be good for TV. It turned out to be a real good brawl between a Scottish man and an Irishman. So it was good for television, but I thought he got hit too much in the fight and was not as crisp as he had been in training. Nevertheless it’s a good win.”
On whether he believes some of Andy’s struggles may have stemmed from the fact he was not in the corner with him to provide instructions:
“I don’t know. Another one of his greatest victories was one night that I wasn’t there with Carl Daniels. I thought the instructions he was getting were the right instructions, but to me the biggest thing is I looked and analyzed it and he looked extremely physically weak and that was the biggest factor. So when you’re in that situation regardless of what instructions you’re getting, they are not going t o be that effective. Andy said he realized at the end of the 9th round that he was losing and this was the second time he had a major television fight and he didn’t want to go back to another three years of rebuilding his career. So he decided to just go out regardless of how he looked and with every punch he threw to just try and have knockout power and going all out for the knockout. It was fortune that he was able to do that, probably from an accumulation of punches. I guess McEwan was getting a little fatigued, too. But it was a good overall fight and very good for television.”
On what areas he believes Andy Lee needs the most improvement with:
“Well upper body movement, two straight up, two steps going straight back. It was amazing he was doing so much different in the training sessions. He was boxing with one of the best prospects in boxing. He and Demetrius Andrade had some tremendous workouts in Florida as well as with a couple of other light heavyweights and cruiserweights. But in that fight he was just going straight back with very little head movement, and against the better fighters you just can’t do that.”
On what it is like as a trainer dealing with situations where you have two fighters with fights on the same night at different venues:
“Well it’s always going to be difficult, but you have to realize that it’s part of the business and you’re going to run across it sometimes if you’re on the top level and you have a lot of good fighters. You have to do pretty much what you have to do, but in this case it was very frustrating because originally we were all expecting to be on the same show. Andy Lee had been tossed about as fighting Martinez on March 12 and Martinez was going to be on HBO, and then Miguel Cotto was told he was fighting. I’m preparing for a training camp with all of us fighting on the same card and when the split came up we had to think about it. We just decided we would train together and we’d just have to do the best we could. I had already made a commitment. Cotto’s fight was signed and we completed that the week before they finally came up with the Andy Lee situation, because he went from Martinez to Duddy to McEwan. So it’s just part of the game when you’re on the top level and this may not be the last time I have to be in this situation, but it’s very painful.”
“I felt that he fought a good fight considering everything. It’s not easy to fight Mayorga. He’s physically a big guy. It looked like he picked up about twenty pounds or more, maybe thirty pounds from the weigh-in to the fight. He was in great shape for this particular fight and he takes a good punch and his style is very difficult to analyze and defend against. So it was a fight that I thought Miguel fought very good in. I was very satisfied with it. He boxed a little bit and he still had to have some exchanges, which he did, with Mayorga. He came back and closed the show with a knockout, so I’m satisfied.”
On whether he was surprised that Mayorga lasted until the 12th round:
“I was surprised that he was able to last, I was surprised at his ability to take a good head punch, and his total just mental determination. It was not just a fight that Mayorga was just fighting to win. He was looking at Cotto at being his entrance into winning the Lottery, because as he said if he won that fight he was going to be able to fight Manny Pacquiao, which maybe meant in excess of $10,000,000 which meant he would have been a multi-millionaire for the rest of his life. That’s why I think he prepared so hard for this fight, no so much just for Cotto but looking beyond Cotto, because he continued to mention that throughout the publicity tour. His promoter, Don King, and his whole camp were continuously talking about Pacquiao, Pacquiao. This is what they had to do to get the big mega-million dollar fight, so I think he took this fight very seriously and trained very well and was prepared for the fight.”
His views on the final round when Cotto stopped Mayorga:
“Well I noticed that the best rounds for Mayorga were when he Miguel backing up, even though Miguel was pretty good at ducking, and bobbing, and weaving, and slipping, and leaving Mayorga hung up in the ropes a lot of times and then all out of position. But still Mayorga had his best rounds when he had Miguel backing up. So I told him the last round to go out real tight and close and try to get into an exchange with him, because I thought even though Mayorga was throwing looping punches earlier they were even wider as the fight went on, and to try and beat him to the punch with short punches and to go in close, and that’s what he did.”
His views on a potential rematch between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito:
“Well that situation still is really not in my hands, but I feel that it’s the most logical fight to be made the way the business of boxing works. In particular in the case of Cotto, I can’t think of any other fight that’s realistically available right now based on the time schedule of all of the potential opponents for him. I think it’s a good possibility it’s going to take place, probably in the summer or late spring of this year. I think for the most part, Miguel has that same type attitude. I don’t think he’s necessarily fond of fighting but not out of fear of fighting him, but he just feels he does not deserve that opportunity of a super fight. But that’s just something we have to put aside.”
His views on Andy Lee’s performance in his 10th round knockout victory against Craig McEwan:
“Once I saw that video I was not that impressed with the performance. I looked at it and it was a fight where he physically looked not so strong and not so sure of himself. It was the weakest physically I had ever seen him look. He explained to me later on, but it’s not even worth going into. Anyway he said he was very weak going into the fight. Nevertheless you just got to go along with what happened, and what I saw was not an impressive victory even though it was a good victory. It didn’t leave that superstar quality that we were hoping to implore on the public in the fight. But he won the fight and I told him the main thing is to win. To come back after losing I guess eight and a half rounds and to knock a guy out in the final round is still impressive. It turned out to be good for TV. It turned out to be a real good brawl between a Scottish man and an Irishman. So it was good for television, but I thought he got hit too much in the fight and was not as crisp as he had been in training. Nevertheless it’s a good win.”
On whether he believes some of Andy’s struggles may have stemmed from the fact he was not in the corner with him to provide instructions:
“I don’t know. Another one of his greatest victories was one night that I wasn’t there with Carl Daniels. I thought the instructions he was getting were the right instructions, but to me the biggest thing is I looked and analyzed it and he looked extremely physically weak and that was the biggest factor. So when you’re in that situation regardless of what instructions you’re getting, they are not going t o be that effective. Andy said he realized at the end of the 9th round that he was losing and this was the second time he had a major television fight and he didn’t want to go back to another three years of rebuilding his career. So he decided to just go out regardless of how he looked and with every punch he threw to just try and have knockout power and going all out for the knockout. It was fortune that he was able to do that, probably from an accumulation of punches. I guess McEwan was getting a little fatigued, too. But it was a good overall fight and very good for television.”
On what areas he believes Andy Lee needs the most improvement with:
“Well upper body movement, two straight up, two steps going straight back. It was amazing he was doing so much different in the training sessions. He was boxing with one of the best prospects in boxing. He and Demetrius Andrade had some tremendous workouts in Florida as well as with a couple of other light heavyweights and cruiserweights. But in that fight he was just going straight back with very little head movement, and against the better fighters you just can’t do that.”
On what it is like as a trainer dealing with situations where you have two fighters with fights on the same night at different venues:
“Well it’s always going to be difficult, but you have to realize that it’s part of the business and you’re going to run across it sometimes if you’re on the top level and you have a lot of good fighters. You have to do pretty much what you have to do, but in this case it was very frustrating because originally we were all expecting to be on the same show. Andy Lee had been tossed about as fighting Martinez on March 12 and Martinez was going to be on HBO, and then Miguel Cotto was told he was fighting. I’m preparing for a training camp with all of us fighting on the same card and when the split came up we had to think about it. We just decided we would train together and we’d just have to do the best we could. I had already made a commitment. Cotto’s fight was signed and we completed that the week before they finally came up with the Andy Lee situation, because he went from Martinez to Duddy to McEwan. So it’s just part of the game when you’re on the top level and this may not be the last time I have to be in this situation, but it’s very painful.”
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