posted by Large

Friends, Masians, countrymen… what else is left that we haven’t already said or written? In his pre-fight report card today, Cliff Rold made the point for the always excellent Boxing Scene that expectations for this bout are so high right now that a pretty good fight just won’t cut it.

Let’s face the facts and admit that he’s right about that. We’re all expecting a classic. On that front, I really laid it on the line today in my preview over at The Sporting Blog, exhorting even non-boxing fans to check this bout out with superlatives like this:

Boxing was already pretty marginalized in the sporting world when I was a teenager in the 80′s, but a handful of fights from that era continue to live forever outside the narrow confines of the boxing fraternity , Holmes/Cooney, Pryor/Arguello, Leonard/Hagler, Hagler/Hearns. I firmly believe that Cotto/Margarito is going to be one of those affairs, one of the four or five fights from this era that we’ll still be talking about twenty years from now. When that time comes, I imagine you’ll be glad you watched it live.

So if this one turns out to be, well, say, just as good as the Cotto/Mosley fight that I’ve been blathering on about all week, it still might feel like a disappointment.

But that’s what makes boxing so interesting really, the unpredictability of it. Sometimes you have all the hype in place and the right type of coverage for a fight that looks to be a third world war and the fight delivers in the end. And sometimes it doesn’t. Nothing left to do on this one but wait out the next excruciating 30 hours or so and let the chips fall where they may.

I’m not going to restate my position in detail as far as my prognostification goes today. If you’ve been following along all week, you know where I stand, and if you haven’t, here’s my take in a nutshell – I think Margarito’s a little tougher, I think Cotto’s a lot better, and one of the things that I love about boxing is that generally better beats tougher nine times out of ten. Despite what the Rocky movies have taught us, this is a sport where elite athletes compete at almost unimaginable levels of skill, speed and dexterity. I think back to Roger Mayweather in the Floyd/Hatton 24/7 saying something like, “they think this is a Rocky movie but it isn’t, this is real life and the real motherfucker is going to win.”

Which is not to say that Tony Margarito isn’t a real motherfucker. I’d never deign to suggest such a thing. But I do think Cotto is starting to evince signs of a being a once-in-a-generation kind of fighter, whereas I think Margarito is a living legend of badassitude who is a B-minus at best in the skills department. The Leonard/Duran comparison still sums it up nicely to me. I don’t think Cotto will be able to outbox Margo with quite the effortlessness that Ray Leonard could outbox Duran, but then again I don’t think Cotto will be at such a deficit in a toe-to-toe affair as Sugar Ray was with old Hands of Stone either.

In the end, I think it’s Cotto’s fight to lose, and given the savvy that he’s been displaying of late and given the immense stakes, I don’t see him fighting stupid or taking unnecessary chances. Ironically, I really think that Margarito’s best chance in the fight is the strong possibility that Cotto finds it too easy in the earlygoing, because then he might get overconfident and start to reach for the muleta, at which point the Mexican bull could sneak a horn in his side and then it’s game on.

You probably remember a few weeks ago the No Mas powers-that-be granted me five hunge to gamble on fights with here in the public forum, and I promptly repaid that trust by dumping $50 on David Diaz to beat Pacquiao. I’m hoping to recoup some of those losses this weekend. Cotto right now is at -265 (which is fucking ridiculous) but I managed to get my c-note down on him to win earlier at -190, which, yeah, isn’t going to make me rich but will at least get me back to even here on the Mas. Honestly, in other circumstances I might have taken the Margo action (2 to 1 right now) but as you probably have noticed here, well, let me just put the cards right up on the table. I’m a Cotto fan, a big one.

So here it is, Large’s prognostification on the biggest fight of the year – Cotto by split decision. I was thinking UD earlier in the week but I talked myself out of it with my Wednesday Thoughts post.

Last but not least, if you didn’t catch it in the comments the other day, I’ll be ringside at the fight with The Sporting News. I’m about to set off, actually, in about an hour. I’m driving down there with Mrs. Large, who is seven months pregnant with our first child, a boy. And let me tell you something – I’m pretty damn pleased that my unborn son is going to be in Vegas for Cotto/Margo. Seems like it should get him good and pumped up to join us out here in the world. So anyway, I’ll try and get some ringside updates up here, but most of my coverage will be over at The Sporting Blog, so look for me over there. And enjoy yourselves people. We’ll hash it all out on Sunday or Monday.