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© Jim Everett / Saddo Boxing
Last night at Madison Square Garden in New York, British man Michael Jennings faced his toughest challenge yet as he met Miguel Cotto for the WBO Welterweight title.
From the start, Jennings puts a lot of distance between himself and Cotto. Cotto stays in the middle of the ring while Jennings covers most of the canvas area keeping a couple of metres of ‘space’ between them and just dodging in with straight lefts and rights.
Cotto goes for the body in the closing minute of the round and tries for an uppercut which misses its mark. It’s a cautious first round. Southpaw Cotto lands a good left hook to the face of Jennings mid-way through the third.
Fight stats reveal that Cotto’s punches are far more accurate, having a 35% success rate as opposed to Jennings at 14%. Jennings is just slightly too far away from Cotto to land with the straight punches.
Cotto puts on the pressure in the closing seconds of the round and lands a left body-shot which sees Jennings flinch. Jennings’ nose is bloody at the end of the round.
Jennings starts to find some success landing a right to the face of Cotto with a minute of the fourth to go, but a peach of a left hook from Cotto lands bang on target and Jennings stumbles backwards with Cotto piling on the pressure as the Chorley man is pinned in to the corner.
Jennings drops to his knee and takes the count. They continue, but Cotto keeps up the pressure and sends a sweeping body-shot across the midriff of Jennings, who drops to his knees again.
Jennings gets up and – with just 13 seconds remaining – must be hoping he can survive the round. Cotto goes after him and Jennings is again pinned in to the corner under a barrage of shots. Jennings must have been relieved to hear the bell sound the end of round four – it gives him valuable time to recover.
The New York crowd – who were jeering the slow start of the fight – are on their feet now clearly enjoying the action!
Cotto’s accuracy is impressive. Statistics show that he landed 29 out of 42 power punches thrown in round four as opposed to 4 out of 11 for Jennings.
Cotto’s left straight punch snaps back the head of the ‘Brit’ in the opening minute of round five. With a minute remaining, Jennings is forced back on the ropes and tucks up tight while Cotto lands shots, although they aren’t landing cleanly, to head and body.
With half a minute remaining, Cotto lands a right to the face of Jennings and the Brit goes down for the third time so far. He gets up as the count gets to nine but referee Benjy Esteves Jr calls the contest off.
Miguel Cotto wins by TKO in 2 minutes 36 seconds of round five and is the new WBO Welterweight Champion. His record now stands at 33 wins (27 by KO) and 1 loss.
