Miguel Cotto rather violently bounced Yoshihiro Kamegai’s head all around the ring for twelve rounds last night at the Stub Hub Center in California. He never came close to finishing the ultra tough Japanese contender, but it was a one sided win to set up one final fight in December for the Puerto Rican legend. In the co-main event, Rey Vargas successfully defended his WBC super bantamweight over a game but overmatched Ronny Rios in a pretty fun scrap.
Someone needs to stop putting Yoshihiro Kamegai (27-4-2, 23 KOs) in these situations. Though he will always be game and give his all to the end, he also takes an otherworldly amount of punishment along the way. To take twelve rounds of that from anyone is problematic, let alone an active legend like Miguel Cotto (41-5, 33 KOs). Nevertheless, the Japanese contender persevered to the end like he was likely always going to.
For about four rounds, I did think maybe Cotto would fade late. Kamegai was putting on intense pressure while Miguel, who has never exactly excelled at being fresh in the later rounds, looked notably fatigued pretty early in the fight. In the end, however, Yoshihiro was unable to keep up the intense pressure after sustaining a few rounds of damage from the future Hall of Famer. This is not to say he stopped coming forward for even a second or fighting as hard as he could, only that the pressure lacked the same sort of offensive danger that he was generating for Cotto in the first few frames. Accordingly, the former four division titleholder never really got much worse in terms of stamina after that point in the fight.
In the end Miguel Cotto earned a near shut out decision with one judge giving Kamegai one round and another two. After the fight he deferred to Freddie Roach’s judgment on who he should take on in his final fight in December. Happily, Roach listed the winner of the upcoming Gennady Golovkin/Canelo Alvarez middleweight championship fight as the preferred opponent. This is a great matchup either way, whether it be a fresh matchup with GGG or a rematch of their good, very close fight from 2015 with Canelo. It would be a very quick turn around for the winner of that fight, however, so hopefully Miguel is willing to extend his timeline to at least January.
Miguel also picked up the vacant WBO junior middleweight strap here, but I don’t imagine he ever plans on defending it.
Rey Vargas (30-0, 22 KOs) came out extremely hot in the early rounds against Ronny Rios (28-2, 13 KOs) in the card’s televised opener. He used his range extremely well for a couple rounds by pounding his challenger from the outside. While Rios would get a couple shots in, Vargas was dominating the fight early. After a few rounds Vargas changed his strategy rather inexplicably, however. He began begging Rios to come in and fight the fight that was favorable to his shorter challenger. Vargas was still mostly winning these exchanges, but the fight was suddenly a bit more competitive.
Rounds seven and eight brought a serious momentum shift. It felt as if Vargas was going to let his big early lead slip away when Ronny Rios began banging home huge shots, a couple that visibly bothered the titleholder. Yet, the challenger couldn’t sustain. Vargas turned cruise control on for the last three rounds and comfortably outboxed Rios down the stretch. The cards came back with two of them wide like I and HBO had it, and one 115-113 that I still kind of get. There were close rounds. I am pretty sure I could find five to give to Ronny Rios if I wanted to. With the win, Vargas is now a very usable HBO fighter which is great news for Golden Boy and the network going forward.
All in all it was a good night of fights for Golden Boy and HBO. Too bad hardly anyone noticed thanks to the Mayweather/McGregor circus. Hopefully Cotto’s final fight will find much bigger fanfare.
