Top Night for Top Rank: Cotto, Margarito and Ortiz Victorious

Top Night for Top Rank: Cotto, Margarito and Ortiz Victorious

By Rose Hunter at ringside (Nov 12, 2007) Doghouse Boxing (Photo © Bob Kolb)

As he entered the ring, Shane Mosley accepted the boos from the partisan crowd with outstretched arms and a shrug. The best way to handle it no doubt, but unfortunately he was to continue in this genial vein, as he allowed Miguel Cotto to dictate the terms of the fight that took place in front of 17, 135 fans at Madison Square Garden on November 10.

Mosley, who with this loss has a record of 44-5 (37), connected with some good combinations, but it was Cotto, now 31-0 (25), who landed more often, and with harder punches. From the outset, Mosley played into Cotto’s hands, by

standing in front of him and trading, rather than using his boxing skills. Cotto was particularly effective with the straight right, which, it seemed in the middle rounds of the fight in particular, was a punch he couldn’t miss.

Meanwhile Mosley’s punches seemed to have less effect on Cotto, with the exception of a couple of uppercuts, one of them in round five, after the wrestling match that made up the first part of that round. In round six Mosley finally got up on his toes, but not to move around the ring as it turned out, but instead to bounce up and down on the spot, which did little to prevent Cotto from continuing to land power punches.

In round nine, Cotto went into defence mode and decided to move around the ring himself. Oddly enough, as soon as he did (asked afterwards why he adopted this strategy he confirmed that it was because he believed he was ahead on the scorecards) - Mosley had his best round of the fight. In round ten Mosley connected with another good uppercut and was clearly winning the round early, although Cotto made a comeback with his bread-and-butter punch of the fight - the straight right.

By the eleventh round Cotto was on his bike and pedalling furiously, along the way displaying some of the boxing skills

that we might have expected to have seen from Mosley. This strategy could have led to Mosley being awarded these rounds, making the final fight scores closer than they otherwise would have been. (Two judges scored the bout 115-113, and the third had it 116-113.)

Overall it was a dominant performance by Cotto, and there was no doubt about the decision, a fact that Mosley didn’t dispute, although some members of the press (at the conference afterwards), seemed anxious to encourage him to do so.

In an exciting undercard, Antonio Margarito, now 35-5 (25), lived up to his “Tijuana Tornado” moniker. Golden Johnson, who fell to 25-8-3 (18), made a valiant attempt to survive, but was unable to continue after hitting the canvas for the third time in the first round, and the bout was stopped after 2 minutes and 38 seconds.

In that time Margarito managed to throw 99 power punches, and connected with a brutal 59 (or 60%) of them. Afterwards he announced: “This is the new Antonio Margarito. The Margarito you will be seeing from now on.”

This “new” Antonio Margarito may not be anything Cotto wants a taste of, any time soon. When asked about this possible match-up, Cotto’s response was less than enthusiastic, to put it mildly. “He had the chance to fight me; he wanted to fight Williams,” Cotto said, sounding as though he was settling a squabble between his children, two of whom had accompanied him earlier in the night, on his ring entrance. “Now he’s going to have to wait his turn.”

Which should be familiar territory for Margarito, who has already spent a lot of time waiting his turn, while other fighters preferred to face less dangerous opposition. After losing in July of this year to the freakishly tall (6’ 1”) welterweight Paul Williams - who not too many other people wanted to fight either - it seemed he was in danger of being written off. To get back into contention, the reasoning went, he had to not only win against Johnson, but win decisively. Mission accomplished - and much to the delight of the crowd, including the loyal fans next to the press box, who had made the trip from San Diego to see him in action, and who were already screaming themselves hoarse in support of Margarito before the bout began, and could possibly have sustained some vocal cord damage, had Johnson managed to hang on any longer than he did.

“Arriba Tijuana!” they yelled, as Margarito left the ring, his victory making up for a doubtful decision in the fight prior, which went against the Mexican-American José Armando Santa Cruz, in favour of the Ring Magazine and WBC “interim champion” Joel Casamayor. Although Casamayor landed some sharp combinations, Santa Cruz (like Cotto) landed more, and harder throughout, as well as scoring a flash knockdown of Casamayor in the first round. Casamayor was often off-balance and retreating from the taller, and all-around bigger-seeming Santa Cruz, whose punches were also snapping Casamayor’s head back. Two of the judges awarded the bout to Casamayor 114-113, while the third gave it to Santa Cruz by the same score, giving Casamayor, now 35-3 (21), the split decision victory. Santa Cruz is now 25-3 (14). The crowd rightly booed the decision.

In a junior welterweight bout, California’s Victor Ortiz moved to 20-1 (15), and was in the ring a minute or so less than Margarito, in dispatching the Colombian Carlos Maussa, now 20-5 (18). Ortiz needed only 19 punches to do it, all of them power punches, according to CompuBox. Maussa winged twice that amount in the allotted time, “winged” being the operative word. Several of his hooks seemed to be travelling through the air in slow motion. Maussa reminded me, as he usually does, of Mickey Rourke in one of his drunken rumbles in the movie Barfly (and possibly Mickey Rourke in the ring as well, although I can’t say for sure, never having seen one of the actor’s professional fights). Nevertheless, Maussa’s ungainly style has given plenty of elite fighters trouble, including Cotto, who took eight rounds to put him away (in 2003), and Ricky Hatton, who needed nine (in 2005). Ortiz’ calm and measured KO victory was certainly impressive.

At the press conference, Bernard Hopkins, wearing a tie that looked like a Futurist painting, provided the entertainment, while we waited for Cotto to arrive. Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, or the “Swiss banker” as Top Rank’s Bob Arum has referred to him, was less accommodating when it came to the (admittedly repetitive) questioning from some members of the press, as to Oscar de la Hoya’s upcoming fight plans.

“We’re not going to tell you,” he snapped. “Stop asking.”

Behind him, Arum, cheeks ruddy and glowing, grinned like the cat that swallowed the canary, in a jovial, your-favourite-uncle kind of way.

It certainly was a good night for Top Rank, who were well represented by the impressive victories of their fighters Cotto, Margarito, and Ortiz.