Will Pacquiao vs. Cotto Put Doubts to Rest?

Pacman Latest News from sportingnews.com Wed, 07 Oct 2009

Yesterday here at The Rumble, Largarito posted a piece about how Nacho Beristain is predicting Miguel Cotto will be knocked out by Manny Pacquiao in five or six rounds. His opinion is built on an idea that has become commonplace in the boxing world, that Cotto is not the same man he was before the Margarito defeat. Beristain referenced the same thing everyone else has in voicing this notion – Cotto’s fight against Joshua Clottey this past June. In it, Cotto was forced to scratch and claw his way to a disputed decision victory over an opponent most expected him to handle easily given his superior status.

But as with a lot of other things in boxing at the moment, the relative value of that assessment is a hard thing to gauge. Is Cotto really a “spent force,” as one No Masian put it in the comments section of Shoefly’s recap of the fight back at the Mas? It's become frequent speculation that he may be, and no less of a boxing expert than the great Nacho Beristain saw it as evident against Clottey. But I ask you: What about the cut? Cotto suffered a bad one against Clottey, and showed real courage in fighting through it. How do we know that is not the real reason he struggled so much against Clottey (not to mention the fact that Clottey is much better than people often give him credit for being)?...

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