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LOS ANGELES--He might be a virtual teetotaler but Coach Freddie Roach sincerely believes that Miguel Cotto is still suffering from a hangover.
Drawing on his own personal experience as a featherweight who compiled a decent 39-13, 15 knockouts career record, Roach analogizes the Puerto Rican’s devastating experience in taking a beat down from Antonio Margarito to his own two round KO defeat to Lenny Valdez.
“I got caught in the second round,” Roach said Monday at the Wild Card Gym where he put both Manny Pacquiao and British wunderkind Amir Khan through their training paces. “I had never really been hurt in the ring before, amateur or pro, until that fight.
“I was just never the same. It was mental, I think. I knew that I could get hit and hurt.”
Roach was 26-2 when he faced the 9-1 up and comer out of border town Mexicali. Valdez wound up his pro career with a final mark amazingly of 35-18-1, 22 knockouts, amazingly similar to Roach’s totals.
To hear Roach tell it, a fighter who knows he is vulnerable is different than a fighter who has had everything going his way.
Looking at Roach's ring resume underlines his theory because the "Choir Boy" as he was known lost 10 bouts after getting stopped by Valdez.
Roach thinks Cotto's downhill slide will be accelerated by Pacquiao's speed and power.
“He just made made mistakes in the Margarito fight and he knows that,” Roach said. “No matter if he thinks Margarito had something in his hand wraps or not, Cotto still got knocked out and he can’t forget that completely.”
I asked Roach if his repeated KO 1 prediction for Manny over Miguel wasn’t just harmless puffery.
Roach smiled and then said, “If Manny hurts him in the first, Manny will finish him. I just said that really to get a rise out of the Cotto camp. If they had ignored me, that’s fine but they responded to that so maybe it’s in their heads now.
“Don’t forget that Zab Judah had Cotto hurt.”
Roach said that the limited experience of Jose Santiago as Cotto’s chief trainer and cornerman is an obvious deficiency.
“Cotto, for all his experience, is like any fighter. He still makes mistakes, fundamental mistakes. He’s got a rookie team around him. Look back at his fights and you will see that Miguel Diaz (now Pacquiao’s cutman) was the mouthpiece in Cotto’s corner.
“Any fighter makes certain mistakes because you get into bad habits or you fall back into those bad habits. I did it myself as a fighter and I know that, when (legendary trainer) Eddie Futch wasn’t around, I fell back into those poor habits,” Roach said.
Roach said one habit of Cotto’s might lead to a commercial endorsement deal with a money transmission company such as Western Union.
“Cotto telegraphs his punches. He’s the boss in his camp, in the gym and in the corner. But he can’t watch himself. He can’t see what his mistakes are. You need to have someone watching you every day, watching your everyday habits and tendencies.
“What experience does this Santiago have, a degree in sports medicine? I love these sports medicine guys.”
Taking Roach’s emotional temperature Monday was quite easy for me.
It might’ve been a cool, misty even foggy 72 degrees, standard LA weather conditions, but Roach is cooking with hot grease.
Pacman’s trainer thinks Cotto is soon about to get into a flaming cauldron, that will prove to be scorchingly hot.
The stove is on high and the ingredients have been poured into the pot.
(mlcmarley@aol.com)
Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-5699-NY-Boxing-Examiner~y2009m11d3-Western-Union-Man-Roach-says-Cotto-telegraphs-his-punches
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