Miguel Angel Cotto vs. Andy Lee

Rewind a couple of years.

Cotto loses clearly to Austin Trout at 154lbs.

Lee starts off well but gets broken down and stopped by Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., and then struggles badly with Anthony Fitzgerald, needing a gift decision to get past what is meant to have been a relatively easy start to his comeback.

Both were, in late 2012 into early 2013, lost at sea - Lee mourning the recent passing of legendary trainer Emanuel Steward, and Cotto ending an experimental relationship with Cuban amateur guru Pedro Luis Diaz in which he went 1-2 and probably enjoyed most of his success in the Margarito II and Mayweather fights because of the lasting imprint of having worked under Steward in the Foreman and Mayorga fights.

Cotto linked up with Freddie Roach in a desperation move that seems to have completely reinvigorated him. In many ways, the light welterweight version of Cotto has been reborn now at 160lbs. He looks stronger and less fragile and has regained his killer instinct, and obliterated tough but limited Delvin Rodriguez.

Lee, meanwhile, kept plugging away - scoring a couple of easy knockouts before running into another tough assignment with Horta, again just squeaking by via MD in a routine eight rounder. He then dropped to 154lb and trailed on the cards before sparking out green prospect John Jackson with a single blow.

Then came their big nights - Cotto going for the lineal MW title and big payday against Sergio Gabriel Martinez, and Lee answering the call to be "fed" to blue chipper Matt Korobov for the WBO title vacated by Peter Quillin. Both, shockingly, won by stoppage. (Cotto dominating a brittle and legless Martinez from the jump, and Lee having to rally from yet another early deficit with a sweet-as-honey money punch)

Two extremely unlikely middleweight champs. If you told anybody just two years ago they'd be co-reigning today at 160lbs in 2014, you'd have been a laughingstock - and that's just two years ago, let alone back in 2008 when both were originally written off by many upon suffering their first career defeats, by stoppage, at the hands of Antonio Margarito (at welterweight) and Bryan Vera.

Now, this pair with all their commonalities (both former Kronk Gym pupils, both Olympians, both possessing otherworldly hooks, both as capable of being hurt as they are of dishing it out and thus both always making for high drama and excitement, and both having taken a long and strange winding road to where they stand now...) could potentially engage in the most bizarre-looking unification ever seen.

Lee is 6'2", Cotto 5'7". Lee's reach is 75", compared with Cotto's 67". This would in many ways resemble a super middleweight versus a super lightweight - and that would not be far off from aptly describing it, as Lee has always been a large and wiry MW whose frame could probably support a move up to SMW or even LHW, and Cotto entered his prime down at 140lbs (and flourished at 147lb).

Yet, even with that much height and length working against him (and with southpaws Pacquiao and Trout giving him problems in the past) - 18 and 20 centimeters respectively, the bookies would probably install Cotto as the betting favorite because of his big fight experience and for having beaten 'the man' in the division.


This would complete half of the unification puzzle at the weight, and the easiest half at that. Jermain Taylor holds the IBF but is facing jail time - so that one is probably going to be up for grabs in a vacant title match soon. Meanwhile you have three different tiers of WBA middleweight champion floating around.

This is the part that could & should be made. Both have big enough names to make it worth it.

 

With their corners worked by Adam Booth and Freddie Roach, they could make for quite a show, full of fireworks. :bbb



The partnership between Lee and Booth hasn't been the smoothest of sailing (there were the hiccups with Fitzgerald and Horta, both very close shaves in which Lee may have been lucky to get the nod - and in both of his last two kayos Lee had to come from behind after getting dug into a hole) but his fitness and stamina do seem considerably improved from when they started working together.

On the other hand, Cotto and Roach clicked instantly, both in the gym and in the ring. While beating D-Rod was hardly anything to halt the presses over, nor even stopping him (Jesse Feliciano had managed it in 2007, after all), completely blitzing him in dominant fashion like that was remarkable. He was just as destructive with Maravilla, though admittedly his body was already falling apart.