Miguel Cotto vs. Yoshihiro Kamegai – Official weights

Boxingnews24.com

By Jim Dower: A very thin looking Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) weighed in at 153.6 pounds during Friday’s weigh-in for his fight against #6 WBO Yoshihiro Kamegai (27-3-2, 24 KOs) for their battle on Saturday night for the vacant WBO junior middleweight title at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. Kamegai, 34, weighed in at 153.8 lbs.

The 5’9” Kamegai looked far less drained than the 5’7” Cotto despite being 2 inches taller than him. As thin and emaciated as Cotto looked today, he’s likely going to put on a lot of weight overnight. Cotto isn’t the type that rehydrates into the 170s like Saul Canelo Alvarez, but he’ll still be fairly big for the 154lb division in likely coming in at 165 lbs. on Saturday night.

Cotto, 36, has been out of the ring for 2 years since his loss to Saul Canelo Alvarez in November 2015. The World Boxing Organization didn’t care that Cotto has been inactive and is coming off of a defeat. They still placed him No.1 in their rankings, above Erickson Lubin. It’s unclear how long a fighter can inactive and still be ranked in the top 15 by the WBO. 2 years is obviously pushing it.

The ranking the WBO gave Cotto is nice, but it might not help if he’s rusty against Kamegai and not the same fighter he once was. Kamegai might be one of the better fighters at 154, but he’s been active, he hits hard, and he’s got the size advantage over Cotto. This could end badly for Cotto if he can’t get Kamegai out of there early on Saturday. Cotto looked shaky as far back as 2011, when he fought an over-the-hill Ricardo Mayorga. That was not an easy fight for Cotto. He scored a knockout in the 12th, but he was having some major problems. Since then, Cotto has a mix of success, mostly beating weaker opposition like Delvin Rodriguez, injured Sergio Martinez, Daniel Geale and Antonio Margarito. During that time frame, Cotto has suffered losses to Floyd Mayweather Jr., Austin Trout and Canelo Alvarez.

After beating an injured Sergio Martinez to win the WBC middleweight title in 2014, Cotto beat Geale and then lost the title to Canelo. Cotto hasn’t fought since then.

This is a very important fight for the 36-year-old Cotto, as he needs a win here for him to stay in the running to face the winner of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady “GGG” Golovkin fight on September 16. Cotto hasn’t specifically said that he wants to fight the winner of that hugely popular match, but I think it’s pretty obvious that’s the general idea. Cotto will be retiring in December, and he wants to go out with a big bang. The only way Cotto will do that is if he fights the winner of the Canelo-Golovkin fight. Former IBF middleweight title David Lemieux supposedly is an option for Cotto to fight in December, but it’s unlikely that the Puerto Rican star will want to take tha fight. It’s risky for Cotto, and it could end badly for him if he gets caught by one of Lemieux’s big left hooks the way that Curtis Stevens did in his 3rd round knockout loss last March.

Kamegai beat Jesus Soto Karass by an 8th round stoppage last September in an exciting war. It was a good fight for Kamegai, who closed the chapter on his rivalry with Soto Karass with that knockout. Kamegai is a decent fighter with good power. He loses when he steps up a level. Roberto Guerrero beat him in 2014 by a 12 round decision. Guerrero beat Kamegai at his own game by staying in the trenches and out-slugging him to win the decision. But it wasn’t a smart way for Guerrero to fight though, as he took a lot of punishment in the fight and he was never the same fighter from that point on.

The problem with aging fighters like Cotto staying out of the ring for 2 years at a time is you just never know how much they’re going to have left when they do return to the ring. Cotto should have come back not long after his loss to Canelo, but he was wasting a lot of time trying to get a fight against Juan Manuel Marquez, who has been dealing with a knee problem since 2014. Next, Cotto tried to setup a fight against inactive fighter James Kirkland, and that fight failed to take place. It’s perhaps a good thing that it didn’t take place, as it was supposed to be televised on HBO PPV. The numbers for that fight would have likely been horrible. It’s unclear why Cotto wanted to fight Kirkland, because he hadn’t been fighting and he’d lost his last match against Canelo by a 3rd round knockout. Cotto would have been smarter to handpick a welterweight if he wanted a sure thing win. Trying to get fights against Marquez and Kirkland was a time waster for him.

In other weights on the card, WBC bantamweight champion Rey Vargas weighed in at 121.6 lbs. for his voluntary defense against Ronny Rios. For his part, Rios weighed in at 122 lbs. This is the first defense for Vargas, who captured the World Boxing Council 118 lb. title last April with a one-sided 12 round decision win over Gavin McDonnell.