Miguel Cotto returns Saturday night on HBO. Any other night of the year this would be big news, but not this weekend. Though the Puerto Rican star will be breaking a near two year absence against Japanese brawler Yoshihiro Kamegai, all the noise generated from the Mayweather/McGregor hype machine has completely drowned it out. Still, if you don’t want to spend $100 or put in the effort to find somewhere to watch Saturday night’s PPV, here is your other option.
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First, the bad. Having not fought since suffering the most narrow of defeats to Canelo Alvarez in November of 2015, theoretically Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) should suffer from some ring rust here. The former four division titleholder will be returning officially to junior middleweight in this fight too, a division he has not officially fought in since 2013. Finally, Cotto is also 37 years old and probably has never really been the same ever since the probably illegally aided beat down he received from Antonio Margarito scarily close to a decade ago now.
I don’t anticipate any of this mattering though. While he has technically been working as a middleweight, he has done so by weighing a pound or so over the junior middleweight limit. Miguel has never truly left the division even if he has not had a belt in it since 2011. And while yes he probably has never quite been the same since that night against Margarito, and if not that fight then since the Pacquiao loss a few fights later, he also still has been a really good fighter. Last time out I thought he might have beaten Canelo, but the cards came back wide the other way in too predictable fashion.
As for ring rust, well that is why Yoshihiro Kamegai (27-3-2, 23 KOs) is here. Kamegai’s claim to fame is as an action star. In 2014, Kamegai engaged in an instant classic with Robert Guerrero. Though he lost clearly, the Japanese fighter made his name stateside in that brawl. Last year Kamegai nearly topped his Guerrero war with an epic two fight series against Jose Soto Karass, the first ending in a draw and the second Kamegai winning by late stoppage.
This was very exciting stuff, but it doesn’t bode well at all here for the Japanese contender. Going to war with a powerful, tank of a fighter like Miguel Cotto is a totally different experience. If Miguel Cotto lands anywhere near the type of shots that Soto Karass or even Guerrero did, Kamegai will be in a world of hurt. Furthermore, in between those wars, Yoshihiro lost a 2015 decision to extreme fringe contender Alfonso Gomez. I am not sure a reality could exist in which a fighter could lose to Alfonso Gomez and then beat Miguel Cotto less than two years later.
Yoshihiro Kamegai is here to be destroyed in exciting fashion in order to re-establish Miguel Cotto so he may pursue a bigger fight at the end of this year. If anything else happens, it is time to question Cotto’s ability going forward to fight at a high level. It shouldn’t though. The currently vacant WBO junior middleweight title should be safely on a Puerto Rican’s waist come Sunday morning, an important fact considering that somehow the island and its proud boxing history have no belt holders right now.
In the co-main event, Rey Vargas (29-0, 22 KOs) defends his WBC super bantamweight title against Ronny Rios (28-1, 13 KOs). This is a well matched fight, one of the better ones of the weekend in that regard. Vargas won his title last time out in February, traveling to the UK to win it over Gavin McDonnell in a battle for a vacant strap. Despite his record I don’t think Vargas is a special titleholder by any means, but he won it fair and square on the road.
Ronny Rios has rebounded well from a bad 2014 loss to Robinson Castellanos. We know now that Castellanos is much better than we thought he was then, but Rios looked absolutely horrible in that fight regardless of how good his opponent was. He is 5-0 since then including taking the 0 from Jayson Velez’s record, but this is still a big step back up. This is what makes it an interesting fight.
The card begins at 9:45 Eastern on HBO at the Stub Hub Center in California. That venue has been producing magic over the last couple years, so maybe we will get a war in one of the two fights here. BoxNation has the call in the UK.
