Tonight at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4-0, 32 KO) will defend his title for the first time against former middleweight titlist Daniel Geale (31-3-0, 16 KO) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Live stream the fight by clicking this link.
Cotto has been criticized for taking this fight for several reasons. The number one reason is that fans crave a matchup between Cotto and WBA and IBO middleweight champion Gennady "GGG" Golovkin, but instead are seeing Cotto fight a man Golovkin knocked out last year.
Cotto has also imposed a 157-pound catch weight on this fight, draining Geale, who is a natural middleweight. Ahead of Friday's weigh in there were rumors that Geale was struggling mightily to make the weight; Geale promised he would make it, and was 157 pounds on the button. He looked very drained, however, which could be a factor in the face of Cotto's brutal body punching.
"There was no thought in mind about not making the weight," Geale, 34, told ESPN.com after the weigh-in. "You do it. It's a lot harder and that's it, but you do it. I made it smart. I had a good team around me and we worked very hard. I was very focused. This is a huge opportunity for me, and I was not going to let it slip by and give him a way out of the fight."
Cotto is a heavy favorite ahead of tonight's matchup, but Geale's promoter Gary Shaw said that he expects this fight to look more like Cotto's 2012 loss to Austin Trout rather than his 2013 demolition of Delvin Rodriguez.
Should Cotto win, lucrative fights with either Canelo Alvarez or Golovkin await him should he want them. Cotto himself believes there's a verbal agreement in place with Alvarez, but defeating Geale must come first.
Geale could present problems for Cotto. He's naturally bigger, and fights a difficult style that includes plenty of jabs and movement. Under Freddie Roach, however, Cotto has returned to his body punching roots. His power has carried to middleweight-ask Sergio Martinez, who was knocked down three times in Round 1 last year-and Cotto's feet were as quick as ever in that bout.
Geale is a respected veteran, but Cotto has looked too fresh of late, and has too much to lose, to come up short tonight. Prediction: Miguel Cotto def. Daniel Geale by TKO (Round 11).
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