Marc/Griff/Seoul/others, i'm just an idiot fan who knows nothing about boxing but here's my view on Cotto-Canelo, I'd love to hear other views because you guys always bring it. As much as Cotto has annoyed me, my problems with Canelo in this fight are:
-To me the one thing he does great is combination punching. He has surprisingly fast hands and does an excellent job of mixing up body and head punches in his combinations. But despite his billing as murderer, he's not truly a come forward guy, he relies a lot on his opponent's jab and countering off it to get going. I don't see Freddie/Cotto falling into this trap. I expect them to probably lead with left hooks to keep him off balanced.
-Canelo is also really slow. He's almost always flat footed and against guys who can box, he struggles to cut the ring off and gets more into the "following" mode as opposed to trying to cut the ring off and walking guys down. Cotto won't be in range like Angulo or come to him like Kirkland to make it easy for him.
-So in a fight with a 10 years age gap, the common perception would be maybe take the old guy into deeper waters and hope he tires out. That would break down some of the obstacles of speed and distance he'll face. Except here it's Canelo who tends to gas out in fights and Cotto's strength and condition coach, Gavin MacMillan, has him looking like a 20 year old again. Btw, I hope the trends continues that fighters look to advances in strength and conditioning to prepare physically for fights. Athletes in other sports are always looking for the cutting edge workout to push themselves. Yes, drill the 100000000 boxing hours down in the gym but your workout can be separate. But that's besides the point.
So yeah, that's how I feel about next week. I want Canelo to win because I think it would probably be better for the sport with Cotto on his way out and likely to take some easy non-important fights to close out his Roc Nation deal but I just can't see it. I'm having a hard time seeing paths to victories for Canelo that don't involve Freddie and Cotto having a complete failure in preparation and ring IQ.