Moving up in weight can be a good thing, ask Miguel Cotto
Due to advances in nutrition and sports science, today’s professional fighter tries to trim down as much as possible, but there are risks.
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These days, you often see fighters trying to squeeze down to the very lowest possible weight they humanly can to have a size and strength advantage going into a fight, to essentially fit the biggest athlete possible into a contracted weight for a contest.
US boxing aficionado and host of In This Corner, James “Smitty” Smith has been vocal on the issue of boxers cutting too much weight before fights nowadays and has often advocated for a return to same day weigh ins. I tend to agree with him.
Fighters can box at their normal weight and still be highly effective and even better in a lot of cases. Take Miguel Cotto for example.
Cotto started out as a massive light welterweight in his pro career, blasting guys out of there with brute force on many occasions.
He’s always been a terrific technical boxer, but as his career has progressed and he’s moved up through the weights, his skill set has evolved to an unbelievably polished and well rounded one.
Since he’s moved to middleweight in the last two years and switched trainer to Freddie Roach, he’s looked a totally rejuvenated guy and it could be argued, looks as good as he ever has.
It hasn’t affected his power or put him at a strength disadvantage at all either.
He blasted out Delvin Rodriguez in two vintage Cotto rounds back in 2014 and of course last year he had the huge win over modern day middleweight great Sergio Martinez, putting on a classic boxing display and brutalizing the Argentinian over 10 rounds on route to a stoppage victory.
That win didn’t surprise me at all last year and I remember thinking Cotto would do a job on Martinez, even though most bookmakers had Martinez as favorite.
As it stands, he looks set to fight again in June on HBO under his new promoter Roc Nation (headed by music kingpin Jay Z) and is already back in training at the Wild Card gym.
It is thought that the main front front runner for his next fight is Australian Daniel Geale, although Argentinian Sebastian Heiland’s name has also been mentioned.
Whoever it is, they’ll be going up against a very fresh, strong and well schooled Miguel Cotto, who at middleweight, looks like one of the division’s very best.
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