This fight necessitates a rare pure boxing post from X:


Well, I was really looking forward to this fight.


Cotto had looked spectacular in his last few outings, especially against the limited Gomez, where he was able to show off his full repertoire of skills. Squat, balanced, slick and powerful, he was everything that Andre Berto dreams to be.The boxing press and HBO were treating Cotto as The Next Big Thing.


I had seen Margarito sleepwalk through the first 6 rounds against Paul Williams, but then watched him take away Cintron's heart in a performance of almost Duran-like intensity - he plodded through Kermit's bombs like an army at Passchendale ... stoic, unflinching and unyielding, he battered through the barrage. Cintron - a man who'se self-worth as a fighter was measured purely and simply by his power, was utterly broken and may never be the same again.


The build up to the fight was conducted by two professionals who respected each other and not characterised by wrestling-style badmouthing and bullshit. Two REAL fighters, at the top of their game, confident in their ability, either could win .... in a classic Mexico-Puerto Rico clash. World class, qualified international monsters.


To insiders in the game, this was the biggest clash since Hearns-Leonard.

Disappointingly, in an age when the general sporting public want Wrestlemania XX, or boxers with enormous egos and flashy style, or Olympic gold medallists massacring tomato cans, this fantastic event received poor media coverage outside the boxing press (and posters onj this site!) and the man in the street had not engaged with these two fighters (who, in this poster's humble opinion would have competed very well with Sugar Ray and the Hitman in their welterweight days).


At the pre-fight ceremonies.... the shape of things to come ..... Margarito was HUGE. He towered over Cotto by a good four inches and his arms hung down nearly to his knees, he looked like a telescopic welterweight and we were reminded that Cotto has moved up a division to the welters. Miguel was squat, fit looking and he seemed nonchalent allright, but that size difference must have wormed its way into his mind.


The ringwalks ... Margarito enters the ring first, he looks relaxed and is jumping around a lot (maybe he's warmed up properly and won't plod through the first half of the fight because that would be a major error against a fast starter of Cotto's calibre.) He is relaxed enough to milk the crowd's attention and make the arean his own - so that Cotto, a champion too, has to make his ringwalk and entrance into territory already staked out by the Tijuana Tornado .... Margarito has a face hewn out of rock, a wolflike beard makes him look like a renegade pirate and there is no doubt at all that this is a fearsome warrior. Cotto comes in, but he looks nervous, he bounds around the ring and the two fighters avoid eye contact. Cotto disrobes and he looks sleek, his shaven head and high facial features drawing similarities with fighting men of old - Joe Gans, Jack Johnson and innumerable back and white images of stern, teak-tough fighters whose ghosts haunt boxing to this day. The two men receive their ring talk impassively, locking eye contact and searching each others souls .... both know they are facing a real fighting man who will likely die before giving in. It's going to be a long night.


The bell goes, and I got that old adrenaline flush that I used to get for all the great, anticipted fights - finally, let's get to work! Immediately, it's obvious that Margarito will be the aggressor, Cotto cedes the centre of the ring, backing up straight away and I knew that he had noted that enormous size difference - had he already accepted that he would not knock out the Beast that is Antonio Margarito?


The first six rounds pass in a blur - absolute masterful boxing by Cotto, who would have thought that he could do this as well, under such pressure, with so much grace. he is backing up, never in a straight line, slipping and sliding and showing angles that Margarito will never even have dreamed of, he lays his traps superbly and beautifully timed, short combinations and even uppercuts detonate of Margarito's head time after time after time. He even lands left uppercuts on the right side of Antonio's head - he can't even be seeing these coming - but Margarito plods on relentlessly, bombs and missiles exploding all around him ..... what on earth is keeping him up? The man doesn't even flinch, he doesn't draw breath, he doesn't blink or aknowledge the swirling dizziness and pain that he must be feeling. I have never seen such durability in a welterweight, especially one who must struggle to make weight. Cotto is pure poetry - smooth as Mayweather or Leonard, but with a vicious hurtful power that neither possessed. He also has more than arrows in his mental quiver than Cintron, he is not just a puncher, not just a boxer .... we are looking at a complete fighter here.