By: Danny Serratelli, ringside
Miguel Cotto, 40-4, 33 KO’s looked awesome in dominating Daniel Geale, 31-4, 16 KO’s Saturday Night, defending his WBC middleweight championship of the world before a crowd of 12,157 at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn. Cotto did everything right and seemed to hurt Geale with everything he landed clean, starting with a left hook to body in the first round.
Miguel set the tempo early and Geale seemed to have no answers. In the 3rd round, for a brief moment it seemed that Geale may have found his groove, and one of the official judge’s at ringside even gave Geale the 3rd round. However, the end was near, and Cotto finished him in the 4th round in devastating fashion.
After the fight, Cotto was honest when he said that he obviously is not a real middleweight, in fact he weighed in below the junior middleweight limit of 154 at 153.6. Due to a catch weight in the contract, Geale weighed in at 157, three pounds below the middleweight limit, but when he weighed in on HBO’s unofficial scale hours before the fight and fully clothes he weighed 182, so he entered the ring with a huge size advantage.
Geale was dropped twice in the 4th round, the first with a right hand and the second one came from a left hand. He beat the count, as he had done in the 3rd round of his fight with Gennedy Golovkin, but in similar fashion when he was asked by referee Harvey Dock if he was alright to continue he said that he was not. While he appeared to be in worse shape at the time of the stoppage against Golovkin, he also put forth a more spirited effort in the three rounds with Golovkin than in the four with Cotto.
Geale has now lost three of his last five fights. After winning the IBF Middleweight Title in 2011, he lost it in a close split decision in his 5th title defense against Darren Barker before loses to Golovkin and Cotto, with two victories in Australia mixed in. The three loses were also Geale’s only fights in the USA, with all over his other fights taking place in his home country of Australia and a couple in Germany.
While Gennedy Golovkin, the middleweight WBA champion is Cotto’s mandatory for his WBC title, he will now likely face Canelo Alvarez in the fall on HBO pay-per-view. When asked a bout with Canelo, Cotto said, “Canelo would just be another fight, if the people want that fight to happen, it will happen.” When he was asked about facing Golovkin, Cotto replied, “Why not? After the Canelo fight then we’ll see.”
Miguel Cotto has fought in many wars over the years and has earned his chance to be featured on the A side. People have thought Cotto may be finished several times in the past, but his handlers have always done a good job of finding him the right matches to get him back to where he needed to be. Cotto spoke very highly of his trainer Freddie Roach after the fight, basically saying that Freddie has given him the drive and fire to return and stay at his best.
His fights with a clearly handicapped Sergio Martinez and Geale have given him the opportunity to score devastating victories, and get his fans and the public interested in seeing him against the best in the world again. A bout with Canelo would be very lucrative and also a very competitive fight.
The X factor remains Floyd Mayweather. If Floyd decides he wants to fight for a middleweight belt against Miguel Cotto, plans may change. There would be a lot of politics involved that can prevent that fight, but money talks and everyone will have to wait and see how everything plays out over the next few months.