Cotto vs. Álvarez: who walks away the winner?

By Jaime Alicea III | Posted on November 19, 2015

Puerto Rican middleweight fighter Miguel Cotto is set to fight Mexico’s golden boy Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez on Saturday November 21 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. The winner of the Battle in Vegas will take home the ultimate prize, the WBC World Middleweight Championship. Even at the age of 35, Cotto isn’t slowing down. Under his new coach Freddie Roach, Cotto is on a three fight winning streak.

“I think I brought his boxing back,” Roach said in an interview with Newsday. “He was a good amateur boxer with great movement, and then later against [Manny] Pacquiao, he fought flat-footed and tried to knock people out with one punch. I wanted him to get back to his boxing ability, working on movement, side-to-side, on his toes, light on his feet, faster, and it’s working very well.”

Miguel Cotto has been the pride of Puerto Rico for the last decade. With a record of 40-4, Cotto is out to prove that he can still be a household name in the boxing universe.

Álvarez (45-1-1) has lost only once in 47 professional fights, losing to number one ranked Floyd “Money” Mayweather back in 2013. Since his loss to Mayweather, Álvarez has won three straight fights, and knows that a win against Cotto could push him to new heights in his young professional boxing career.

The reason this fight sold out within days of the fights announcement, has to do with the on-going historical boxing matches between Puerto Rican and Mexican fighters, dating back all the way to 1934. Canelo has never been one to call out his opponent, always staying humble and working on himself instead, but that didn’t stop his fans here at Kean from chiming in their thoughts about the upcoming bout.

“This isn’t even going to be a fight,” Kean student Alex Burgos said. “Canelo is 10 years younger, and he’s quicker and stronger than Cotto. He should knock him out in the sixth round.”

“If Cotto can hurt him early in the fight, then maybe he’ll have a chance,” Dylan Short said. “But at age 35 he’s gonna have a heart attack before he lasts 12 rounds with Canelo.”

The winner of this fight will go on to face the undefeated Kazakhstan knockout specialist Gennady Golvokin. In 34 professional fights, Golovkin has 31 of those fights by knockout. The added motivation to face such a high profile opponent only adds fuel to the fire for these two prizefighters. As they say, history always repeats itself, and look no further than this fight on November 21 to be put in the history books as another historical Puerto Rican and Mexican brawl we can all remember.

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