*I’d like to start this edition of by paying tribute to just a few of the great world class champions that have hailed out of Puerto Rico.
Wilfred Benitez, Juan La Porte, Edwin Rosario, Wilfredo Vazquez, Hector Camacho, Jose Torres, Wifredo Gomez, and the great Felix Trinidad are just a few that I will mention right now just to give you a sense of what kind of boxing talent that has come out of that country.
And with that said let me just say this folks … what makes Miguel Cotto so special is that he was the only one that captured world titles in four weight divisions. And he fought some of boxing’s best including Floyd “Money” Mayweather, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Antonio Margarito, and not to mention that he stopped Sergio Martinez and captured the world middleweight title.
So with a career that spanned 17 years it all came to an end last Saturday night in New York at Madison Square Garden when he went against Saddam Ali for the WBO middleweight title. This one went 12 grueling rounds folks, an if any of you were there ringside, or at home watching it live on HBO what you saw was vintage Miguel Cotto who even at age 37 still had a lot of fight left in him.
This guy has had a total of 47 fights with only 6 losses with 38 coming by way of knockout. And this past Saturday night he showed everyone why he deserves to be in the Boxing Hall Of Fame.
In the early part of this one Cotto was landing some very good jabs and left hooks to the body of Ali and was taking the fight straight to him. But later on Ali started to get his groove on and started connecting and even hurt Cotto a couple of times down the stretch. And as much as everyone was hoping that he could pull off a victory being that this would be his last fight to end a storied career, he just couldn’t weather the assault that he received from Ali. And at the end of twelve rounds all three judges declared a unanimous decision for Saddam Ali.
Whatever you have to say about Miguel Cotto there’s one thing that you can’t say, and that is that he didn’t have the heart of a champion. He always fought like a warrior and always went in the ring to win, although he did suffer only 6 losses out of 47. He was a real champion and this writer’s hat goes off to him for a long and storied career, he will be truly missed in the sport.
Our hats also go off to Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, and Eric Gomez for putting on a spectacular event at the Garden to end this big year of boxing.
Mohammed Mubarak can be reached at [email protected] for your comments. He is an artist as well and has been around the sport of boxing since 1982. You can feel free to go to mubarakart.com, or qmubarak06 on instagram and view his works.
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