Fresh Delight

Miguel Cotto

I would like to give congrats to Miguel Cotto for an impressive victory.

In the 9th round the inevitable happened. Cotto cracked a left hook to the body, Foreman dropped on one knee and referee Mercante Jr jumped in to stop the fight at :42 seconds of the round. With the win Cotto who embraced his mother who entered the ring, improves to 35-2 with 28 knockouts while Foreman who suffered his first setback but had nothing to be ashamed of fell to 28-1 with 8 knockouts.

Pacquiao who watched the fight intently said he thought it was “a very good fight” even as Koncz indicated that Pacquiao “thought it was a draw and a very close fight until Foreman got injured.”

In a post fight interview with Steve Farhood of HBO, Mercante said “There was no need to stop the fight” referring to the towel being thrown into the ring, adding that “they were in the middle of a great exchange, a great fight. People came to see a great fight and I felt like I did the right thing.”

The state-of-the art $1.4 billion Yankee Stadium in the heart of the Bronx was a sight to behold and recalled the glory days of boxing when the so-called cathedral of baseball saw fight fans thrill to the ring exploits of heavyweight champions Joe Louis, Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey and undefeated Rocky Marciano as well as Sugar Ray Robinson considered by many as the greatest of all-time.

The old Yankee Stadium was the site almost 34 years ago of the third fight in the Muhammad Ali-Ken Norton trilogy which Ali won. With the Cotto-Foreman fight doing as well as it did following the almost 51,000 fans that watched Pacquiao whip Ghana’s Joshua Clottey at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Texas, promoter Bob Arum senses that the big stadiums will once again contribute to the continued resurgence of boxing.

posted by J.Castro @ 9:53 PM