By Manuel Perez: The more I think about this fight the more I realize that WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto has only one chance to win the bout and that’s by knockout. Let’s face it, Manny Pacquiao is much more popular than Cotto and like Oscar De La Hoya before him, will probably have the judges siding with him if the fight is close.
It’s sad that boxing is more of popularity contest than actual combat, but that’s the way it is unfortunately. When you have a fighter that is considered to be a big money maker like De La Hoya and Pacquiao, boxing becomes a lot like professional wrestling where it’s very hard to unseat the champion barring a knockout or an injury of some sort.
To beat Pacquiao by a decision and thus overcome the popularity factor with the judges, Cotto is going to have to rip Pacquiao to pieces and make him look like a pathetic fighter. Pacquiao will have to look like a wretched creature by the time the fight is over, covered with blood, cringing and sad looking before I believe that the judges will give Cotto a victory.
That’s not to say that the judges are corrupt, but it goes like that when you have a fighter that is more popular. Judges are human and they just naturally want to gravitate to the more popular fighter, ignoring the fact in a lot of cases that the more popular fighter just took a beating and lost the fight, case in point, Pacquiao’s fight with Juan Manuel Marquez last year in March.
Pacquiao was dominated by Marquez for the entire fight, with the exception of a knockdown that Pacquiao was able to score late in the bout. For many American boxing experts and fans alike, they saw Marquez easily winning the fight. The judges, though, scored it for Pacquiao, the more popular fighter.
It’s was bad for the sport that the judges and the many boxing experts didn’t agree on the decision, because it seemed like such a cut and dried case of a victory for Marquez. Yet, Pacquiao ended up winning the fight, which further shows how hard it is for someone to beat a popular fighter like Pacquiao.
I expect Cotto to win the fight, but I have my doubts that he’ll ever be able to win a decision with the judges, and that’s really sad. The good thing that comes of things like this is that a fighter like Pacquiao can only win a certain amount of gift decisions before the public tires of it and the judges finally wake up and get a clue. The judges will figure it out sooner or later that Pacquiao’s ability doesn’t match his popularity and won’t give him the benefit of the doubt when he gets dominated like he was against Marquez. My hope is that they do this sooner rather than later.
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