Can a Ghanaian Get a Lapdance Over Here or What?
posted by Large
Masians, let’s gear up the machine.
I’m not going to prognosticate today , I’ll leave that for the traditional Friday piece. All I want to say at the moment is this: How is it possible that Josh Clottey is almost a 3-1 underdog in his fight with Miguel Cotto on Saturday? Last I checked I was seeing Cotto at -350 and Clottey at +275 across the board.
Have the oddsmakers lost their minds? Or do they know something we don’t know? Because all I know going into this in terms of intangibles is that Cotto and his career-long trainer (and lifelong uncle) were last seen throwing punches and cinder blocks at each other in Puerto Rico, and following that meltdown, Cotto hired his nutritionist to be his trainer, or to put it another way, he hired nobody as his trainer.
Can Cotto handle turmoil in his corner? No doubt. The word was that he and his uncle weren’t speaking to each other before the Margarito fight last summer, and we all know how that turned out. Cotto lost, yes, but he fought an unbelievable fight, and in retrospect we now also have to wonder if a big part of the reason he succumbed to Margarito’s onslaught was that he was getting hammered all night with hand-anvils.
So things have been sketchy with his team before, and he’s gone into the ring and fought like a superhero. But let us still admit that it is never an ideal circumstance to be surrounded by drama when heading into what promises to be a punishing test of your wherewithal.
I know of no such drama going on in Josh Clottey’s life. All that I hear from his side of the line is what you would expect to hear , this is the fight of his life, he’s going in there to get the measure of respect that thus far has evaded him, he’s prepared to die in there to make his point, etc. Sounds a lot, in fact, like the kind of thing Margarito was saying last summer before the fateful night we all remember so well.
Leaving aside, however, the Cotto family situation and the obvious motivation that is driving Clottey, all the oddsmakers have to do is take a look at the shared opponents between this weekend’s principals to see that 3-1 does not paint the appropriate picture of the differential in this matter.
You got Zab and you got Margarito who have both fought Clottey and Cotto. As mentioned, Cotto got a hellacious beating from Margs in July of 2008 that is now under a cloud of suspicion following the Shane Mosley controversy and the question of Margarito’s loaded gloves. Clottey fought Margarito in 2006 and by all accounts (including mine) had a commanding lead through six rounds when he broke a hand (or injured one badly, I can’t remember) and had to go into retreat. To be fair, that was a common situation back then for Margarito , lose the first half of the fight, come back in the second like Freddy Krueger , but there was no question that Clottey was outspeeding and even out-toughing Margs for six full rounds in that thing. Was Margs plastering up the wraps back then? Who knows. The sad fact is that it’s pretty much impossible to do anything with Margarito comparatively now, because everything he ever did is a giant question mark in the aftermath of the Mosley offense.
On to Zab. Last August, Clottey ruined Zab, thoroughly bitchslapped him, prompting Zab to take a most unmanly way out, effectively quitting and then, safely away from Clottey’s relentlessness, claiming afterward that he was winning the fight (here’s my post on that one where I tore Zab a new one for his ignominious display).
Cotto fought Zab almost two years ago to the day, in his last pre-Puerto Rican day outing at the Garden, with Large and the not-quite-yet Mrs. Large in attendance. And as you may recall, it was a hell of a scrap, fight of the year material in which Zab potshotted Cotto early and definitely hurt him, but eventually fell to the Cotto body attack in the 11th after absorbing more of a beating than one generally expects Zab to be willing to withstand.
Now look , the split on these two fights does not favor Cotto, obviously. But I’m not about to go reading too much into that. As I said, it’s hard to know what to do with Margarito fights now, and as for Zab… the Zab who Cotto fought in ‘07 was still a legit playa in the game trying to move mad weight. The Zab that Clottey just punished looked to me like a guy who’s playing out the string. Zab was a hugely talented fighter in his day , as an aficianado friend of the Mas was just remarking to me at CI’s wedding, he was actually matching Floyd speed for speed for a good five rounds of their fight. But to me, the Cotto bout seemed like his last stand. Beating on him now does not win you high praise in my book. I never exactly shouted from the rooftops when Hatton beat up on Castillo, either. That was Castillo in name only. Likewise the Zab who fought Clottey.
Nevertheless, these are the two shared opponents that we have to go on, and the tilt swings in Clottey’s direction. The one thing that you have on Cotto’s resume that Clottey cannot counter is the Mosley fight, which, whether you think Cotto deserved the decision or not, was a jaw-dropping performance for him and necessarily counts him among the elites of the game. Clottey has no such definitive performance on his record. But that’s the thing, son! He’s looking to get one, and he seems to me to have all the tools in his arsenal to match Cotto bang for bang and speed for speed.
In other words, I think it’s going to be a war. 3-1 in Cotto’s favor is an utter travesty. If I wasn’t such a Cotto fan I’d be all over that shit like skank on Tara Reid.
(P.S. Haven’t talked to I-berg yet, but I’m making an official decree on this one – the contest is on. Closest prognostification to the outcome wins a shirt. Don’t put your entries in here, though – put them in the comments to my Friday prognog piece. Just giving you fair warning to put your thinking caps on.)
June 10th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I always like to look back at old fights to help figure out what will happen in upcoming fights. It sometimes works. Cotto, at the moment, reminds me of Meldrick Taylor. Cotto before Margarito, was like Taylor before Chavez, undefeated and on top. Cotto, like Taylor, outfought his opponent before being brutally knocked out late, in Taylor’s case very, very late. If you remember Taylor came back against a weak opponent after Chavez then took on a good, unbeaten fighter in Aaron Davis. He beat Davis, but he wasn’t really the same anymore. Terry Norris proved that a year later when in KO’ed him in 4. I think this fight for Cotto will be like Talyor’s fight against Davis. Even if he never fully is the same again, Cotto’s got enough ring smarts and defense to beat Clottey( Davis). It will be a good fight. The next one though….
June 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
i’ll save the specifics for friday, but i’ve made no secret on this forum about how much i like clottey….along with azumah nelson, and ike quartey, ghana has produced some of my favorite fighters. we all saw how margarito/cotto played out. i have a strong gut feeling that this fight will play out in an eerily similar manner. i’ve seen cotto hurt by guys that have nowhere near the skill or tenacity of clottey (a man in his early thirties looking for respect and long-term financial security).
and while i love watching miguel cotto fight, i don’t think there’s any chance of him being the same fighter that he was before margarito (as Large noted, that wasn’t his first war). i’ll leave it at that until friday.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:50 am
You are right, the odds are strange. And sure, Clottey will be a hard fight – but I think the bookies are right, I just don’t see Cotto losing this one.
Clottey is tough, but he is no knock-out-puncher and he tends to fade in the later rounds, while Cotto – if not hammered with anvils – is still strong in the end.
It was easy for Clottey to be faster than Margo – who isn’t. He won’t be the faster man come saturday, and I don’t see him rallying like Margo did.
@Brad: I don’t think you can compare Cotto to Taylor. Sure Cotto may have lost something, like Meldrick did – but he still has massive knockout-power, which Meldrick always lacked. That makes it much easier for Cotto to still be a player.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Trickster, Cotto doesn’t have massive knockout-power. He might have at 140, but at welterweight he needs to wears guys down(unless it’s Gomez or Jennings in the ring with him). As a matter of fact, as I watched the Cotto-Margarito fight, I wondered why Cotto was focusing so much on head shots at Margarito. I thought Cotto was fighting well early but he needed to do more body work. He couldn’t KO Margarito early, so grind him down with body work.
The problem with Cotto is, as I see it, he comes straight at you, he’s easy to time, he doesn’t move his head(he’s fairly easy to hit, Margarito is slow and was connecting whenever he wanted to on Cotto) and he needs time to wear down an opponent. His biggest problem is the fact that he is either unable or unwilling to adjust his game after he’s been hurt. This is why he reminds me of Meldrick Taylor. Taylor had all those same faults, lots of fighters do actually, but Meldrick’s main problem was he just keep coming forward, fighting the same fight, after he has been hurt.
Now, having said that, I love Cotto and I think he’ll win Saturday. I also hope I’m wrong about the Taylor comparision, but something tells me I’m not.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I’m going to be at the Garden for this one, anyone else going to be there?
I have yet to see anyone hurt Clottey and I agree he is not a huge puncher so I expect this one to go 12. I actually didn’t bother to see the Jennings fight so I don’t know what residual damage Cotto has from the Margs fight. I’m sure there is still some hangover. Clottey has been inactive for awhile so that can’t help him.
I definitely see this one as a back and forth fight. Both guys tend to fight in spurts. You get the feeling that Cotto can’t lose when he has that PR crowd behind him. We’ll see if he comes ready for this one and if his new training team prepared him properly. Clottey is hungry – but can he take his game to that extra gear to get over the hump? I’m really psyched for this one. I think it will be very much like Oscar vs. Ike. It should go down to the wire.
June 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Large – word to the title of this article, definitely one of my favorite Chris Rock skits:
http://www.imeem.com/people/L02RRWn/music/dwKvt-DE/chris-rock-table-dance/
June 11th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Sorry Brad, I didn’t use the right word – Yeah, Cotto is no one-punch-guy. But he knocks people out, even if he grinds them down. Margo and Mosley were the only guys in the last years, that could stay on their feets against Cotto – and both guys have huge chins. That will always help Cotto, he can really hurt guys. Meldrick Taylor couldn’t knock someone out with a chair.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
i hear you on the odds being off on this one…i think its based on the belief that clottey is probably going to have either knock cotto out or decisively win probably at least 8 rounds to win this fight
June 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Kurt – I’m definitely feeling the Oscar/Ike thing. I actually was going to write a piece for HBO comparing this fight to that one, but they were booked up in features for Cotto/Clottey. But it has that feeling to it, semi-final kind of fight with the big daddy waiting in the wings, the under-rated Ghanaian hardass and the superstar in a fight that promises to be a wangdanger.
Don’t see much Meldrick in Cotto myself, Brad – just different kind of fighters all around. But I hear you on Meldrick/Chavez vs. Cotto/Margs – that beating Cotto got that night certainly felt like the kind that could make a young man old in the space of twenty minutes. We’ll see.
As far as Jennings goes, Kurt, there was nothing to be gleaned that night. As I wrote today at the Sporting News, Cotto has had much harder sparring sessions than that. Jennings had nothing. Cotto looked like he carried him five rounds just to get some work.
It’s a good point about Clottey’s inactivity, worthy of putting up against Cotto’s family turmoil in the intangibles column, although given what I just said of Jennings, it’s almost like Cotto hasn’t really fought since Margs.
Cotto’s approach will be everything here, I think. He needs to have learned something from the Margarito fight, because… well, I’ll get into it more tomorrow.
June 11th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
What reminds me of Meldrick (sorry I have this inability to let me bad comparisions die a quick death) are:
1) the horrible beating at the hands of a man you out fought for most of the fight.
2) The constant forward movement, without feints or head movement.
3) the stunning lack of a plan B, once the plow straight ahead game doesn’t work.
If Meldrick knew how to slip a punch or feint Chavez out of position or do anything other that keep coming forward and throwing punches at JC he would have won without a problem. And not taken the punishment. Same thing with Cotto. It’s straight forward..all the time. The thing that gets me is he more talented than that. He fights like Gatti or Ward. There’s no need for him to play the boxing equivilant of russian roulette with opponents that he has more talent than. He’s got good skill. He just needs to adjust when things aren’t going well. When I say Taylor fight Chavez I was amazed at how badly he was beating a great fighter. But around the 9th round he was slowing down and he made no attempt to simply survive rounds or conserve energy. He just keep throwing punches and coming forward. Cotto did the same thing with Margs. He turned into Mickey Ward instead of simply outboxing a man he was more than capable of outboxing.
Guys like Ward and Gatti fight “straight ahead, pier 6 brawl style” because they don’t have the talent to fight a smarter way. Taylor and Cotto do. Taylor refused to ever take a backward step and it was unfortunate. He’s messed up today from this mentality. it’s even more sad because he didn’t need to. I hope Cotto has watched the Margs fight and seen that it didn’t have to go that way. we’ll see.
June 11th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Brad, I think you’re referring to Cotto circa 2006. The Cotto who beat Mosley had a plan b and a plan c. Starting around the Zab fight, Cotto started to show a different look than the stealth body bomber thing he made his bones with. By Mosley he’d turned into a guy who could outspeed and ultimately outthink Sugar Shane, which is a feat. Even against Margarito, Cotto put on a ridiculous boxing exhibition for six rounds of a kind that he would have been incapable of three years ago. But he ran into the unfortunate fact of Tony’s concrete chin and (perhaps literally) concrete fists.
I tend to think Cotto’s chances Saturday night lie with his counter-punching and ring generalship. I think if he gets into an all-out firefight with Clottey, he’ll lose it, because I think Clottey is almost as tough an out as is Margs.
June 11th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Yeah you’re right large. I do seem to remember Cotto being quite clever in the late rounds against Mosley. Shane actually looked frustrated at one point in the 11th. Like I said, I have this thing about not letting my weak arguements die quickly.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Well, Brad, the Chavez Taylor thing definitely works. Never in the historyi of boxing has such a great talent gotten so thoroughly used up in a single night. And Cotto margs had that sickening feeling about it for sure.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Large one more thing about Meldrick. I know he was the product of the tough Philly gym wars. It does seem like fighters from Philadelphia have to be tough, in-your-face, badasses. It’s like a code that they have to follow. Matthew Saad Muhmammad, Joe Frazier, Taylor, etc. I remember Hagler having to go to war with Philly fighters like Bennie Briscoe, Boogaloo Watts and Willie “the Worm” Monroe. Philadelphia is like Mexico. The fighters better be bad MF’s who fight hard. I know the Blue Horizon and the Spectrum use to have fights all the time in the 70’s and 80’s. Did the fans and promoters there demand toe-to-toe, in your face action or am I falling for a cliche?