Tweet
CLOSE CALL FOR COTTO
Is He More Gatti Than Trinidad?
By William Dettloff
(From The Ring Extra, February 2006; on sale December 6, 2005)
All the signs told us that sooner or later we’d be predicting great things for Miguel Cotto. And if not great things, then very, very good ones. He has all the things we look for in a young fighter whose future hints at real greatness: A solid amateur background. A big punch. Excellent skills. A built-in fan base. Dedication, composure, and professionalism beyond his years, and, as far as we know, none of the fatal vices that afflict so many athletes: women, booze, hubris.
Perhaps most telling, his promoter, Top Rank, hasn’t babied him. He’s been matched as tough as any prospect we can recall. And he hasn’t lost yet. Or even won controversially. At this point, even the hottest prospects, if they’re matched hard, will have a disputed decision win or two on their ledger. Cotto has won outright over every guy he’s been in with and some of them were good and difficult fighters.
Many of us have been waiting to anoint him the next great Puerto Rican prizefighter and none too soon, considering Felix Trinidad’s apparently permanent departure. Can’t you picture it? Wilfredo Gomez, Edwin Rosario, Felix Trinidad, Miguel Cotto. Not as polished as Gomez, as explosive as Rosario, or as charismatic as “Tito,” but enough of each of those guys to make a hell of a good fighter and maybe a future Hall of Famer. Premature? Sure. But the signs were there.
Maybe they still are. Maybe Cotto’s recent exciting struggles against Demarcus Corley and especially Ricardo Torres were just a byproduct of the brave matchmaking we’ve congratulated him on so far. That would be just like us, wouldn’t it? Praise the guy for taking tough matches and then downgrade him because things got rough. Really, if Cotto proved anything during his seventh-round stoppage of Torres in front of 10,137 fans at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall on September 24, it is that he is all fighter.
“He’s a tough kid. He’s got a lot of guns and lot of balls too,” veteran trainer Al Certo told The Ring. “He shows a lot of guts out there. I like him. If his legs and chin hold up, he can be around a long time. He’s got youth on his side.”
Cotto’s win over Torres would be a Fight of the Year candidate in any year in which Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo weren’t knocking each other’s brains all over Las Vegas every other week. It was that kind of fight. It was that exciting. And that’s the problem. Great fighters are rarely that exciting. And guys who are as exciting as Cotto was against Torres, and, to a lesser degree against Corley, rarely turn out to be great.
Generally, prizefighters that get remembered are one of two things: very exciting, or legitimately great. Very few are both. There’s a good reason for that: It’s vulnerability that makes a fighter exciting. And the great ones are too dominant, at least until they’re at or near the end, to be especially vulnerable. If they were, they wouldn’t qualify as great. There are a couple of exceptions, guys that fall right on the line. Matthew Saad Muhammad is one. Mickey Walker another. Thomas Hearns too.
What makes the exciting ones exciting is they teeter on the tip of defeat and then find a way to win. The way Cotto did against Torres. The great ones win like they’re getting out of bed in the morning, like it’s natural. They don’t understand what all the drama is about. It’s easy. Nothing exciting about it.
Just to be clear, we’re not talking about the kind of exciting that real hard-core junkies dig. We’re not talking about Willie Pep exciting, or Ray Robinson exciting. Yes, those guys were exciting, but in a narrow sense. Revisit some of that old footage. You don’t get excited watching those guys. You get humbled a little. Or awed. If you really know what you’re looking at, maybe you get a little teary-eyed at the genius. But not excited.
Is He More Gatti Than Trinidad?
By William Dettloff
(From The Ring Extra, February 2006; on sale December 6, 2005)
All the signs told us that sooner or later we’d be predicting great things for Miguel Cotto. And if not great things, then very, very good ones. He has all the things we look for in a young fighter whose future hints at real greatness: A solid amateur background. A big punch. Excellent skills. A built-in fan base. Dedication, composure, and professionalism beyond his years, and, as far as we know, none of the fatal vices that afflict so many athletes: women, booze, hubris.
Perhaps most telling, his promoter, Top Rank, hasn’t babied him. He’s been matched as tough as any prospect we can recall. And he hasn’t lost yet. Or even won controversially. At this point, even the hottest prospects, if they’re matched hard, will have a disputed decision win or two on their ledger. Cotto has won outright over every guy he’s been in with and some of them were good and difficult fighters.
Many of us have been waiting to anoint him the next great Puerto Rican prizefighter and none too soon, considering Felix Trinidad’s apparently permanent departure. Can’t you picture it? Wilfredo Gomez, Edwin Rosario, Felix Trinidad, Miguel Cotto. Not as polished as Gomez, as explosive as Rosario, or as charismatic as “Tito,” but enough of each of those guys to make a hell of a good fighter and maybe a future Hall of Famer. Premature? Sure. But the signs were there.
Maybe they still are. Maybe Cotto’s recent exciting struggles against Demarcus Corley and especially Ricardo Torres were just a byproduct of the brave matchmaking we’ve congratulated him on so far. That would be just like us, wouldn’t it? Praise the guy for taking tough matches and then downgrade him because things got rough. Really, if Cotto proved anything during his seventh-round stoppage of Torres in front of 10,137 fans at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall on September 24, it is that he is all fighter.
“He’s a tough kid. He’s got a lot of guns and lot of balls too,” veteran trainer Al Certo told The Ring. “He shows a lot of guts out there. I like him. If his legs and chin hold up, he can be around a long time. He’s got youth on his side.”
Cotto’s win over Torres would be a Fight of the Year candidate in any year in which Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo weren’t knocking each other’s brains all over Las Vegas every other week. It was that kind of fight. It was that exciting. And that’s the problem. Great fighters are rarely that exciting. And guys who are as exciting as Cotto was against Torres, and, to a lesser degree against Corley, rarely turn out to be great.
Generally, prizefighters that get remembered are one of two things: very exciting, or legitimately great. Very few are both. There’s a good reason for that: It’s vulnerability that makes a fighter exciting. And the great ones are too dominant, at least until they’re at or near the end, to be especially vulnerable. If they were, they wouldn’t qualify as great. There are a couple of exceptions, guys that fall right on the line. Matthew Saad Muhammad is one. Mickey Walker another. Thomas Hearns too.
What makes the exciting ones exciting is they teeter on the tip of defeat and then find a way to win. The way Cotto did against Torres. The great ones win like they’re getting out of bed in the morning, like it’s natural. They don’t understand what all the drama is about. It’s easy. Nothing exciting about it.
Just to be clear, we’re not talking about the kind of exciting that real hard-core junkies dig. We’re not talking about Willie Pep exciting, or Ray Robinson exciting. Yes, those guys were exciting, but in a narrow sense. Revisit some of that old footage. You don’t get excited watching those guys. You get humbled a little. Or awed. If you really know what you’re looking at, maybe you get a little teary-eyed at the genius. But not excited.
Comment