Quote Originally Posted by GRBOXINGFAN View Post
Their round by round scoring wasn't all that bad and they were a little biased when calling Cottos shots. I had Margarito clearly winning round 2 and I gave him round 6 in a close one as well.

They really missed the boat in the ones story though. The story of this fight was the aggression and body work wearing Cotto down. He looked so much faster in the 1st 5 rounds, but he didn't protect the body and he was eventually gonna slow down. When Tony almost drop him with a body shot in round 2 I thought Cotto probably had some cracked ribs on his right side.

Cotto was so much quicker that Tony couldn't land a right to save his life, but he just kept pounding away at the body and Cotto slowed and tired enough to get hit in the head. He broke him down, he broke his will. You could see it by the 7th that Cotto was not going to win the fight. At that point he wasn't moving as well, he was just backing up to get away. He was already exhausted and the Body shots in the later rounds took his will to fight. By rounds 10 and 11, I was in fear for Cotto's safety.

Also it seemed Cottos shots had so much less steam after round 6, this was also a result of the body work. The announcers really blew a text book chance to educate the fans about the value of a good body attack and they showed considerable bias instead.

The body work won this fight early. I also thought Mayweather won the Hatton fight with the body work he did early. Its like putting money in the bank for later in the fight. Eventually your opponent will slow and weaken if you can sustain an early body attack. And Margarito, like Floyd, will keep going to the body even when a guy is hurt to the head. Margarito was maybe a little hurt a couple times, but never seriously. It seemed Cotto's punches were never really turned over, even when he snapped the head. Margarito has a chin of steel. Margarito also completely sold out to protect his own body. After the 1st round, I don't think he though Cotto could hurt him so he left himself a little more open to the head while dominating the body exchange. Its really the only way he couldv'e won the fight. If Cotto couldv'e protected the body, he wouldn't have tired and he would have won a wide decision. The post fight was crap. You could tell HBO was unhappy that their guy got KOed.
Spot on. The top rank commentators on Setanta missed the boat as well, and it was only by the 8th that they realised what was really going on in the fight. While Cotto was winning the rounds, Margarito was putting genuine damage in the bank as early as the second.

Tony's a beast, he did take some serious headshots in that fight, but the difference was they didn't have cumilative effect like Margarito's steady aggression.