By: William Holmes
The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York was the host site for championship caliber boxing for the second week in a row as Miguel Cotto defended his WBC Middleweight title against former IBF Middleweight Champion Daniel Geale.
The undercard was rather lackluster, but featured two surprising upsets as Angel Luna snapped the undefeated record of Jose Lopez and Fernando Vargas defeated Wilfredo Vasquez in the final undercard bout of the night.
New York City radio personality Angie Martinez of Power 105.1 and Grammy nominated artist Big Sean provided some entertainment for the fans in attendance before the start of the HBO televised World Championship bout.
Cotto is a major draw in New York City, but the Barclays Center had a lot of empty seats and closed off sections at the start of the televised portion of the card and the arena didn’t have the same feel as a typical Cotto fight at nearby Madison Square Garden.
Michael Buffer began the introductions for the main event at around 10:45 p.m. and introduced Daniel Geale (31-3) into the ring first to a chorus of boos. Miguel Cotto (39-4) entered second with no music and was greeted loudly by his legion of fans.
Both boxers fought out of an orthodox stance and Geale looked to be significantly bigger than Cotto. Cotto went to the body often in the first round and his jab was on point. Geale’s punches were having difficulty finding its target in the first and Cotto showed he had the slightly faster hands.
Cotto continued with his body attacks in the second round and was showing a nice jab.
Geale slipped in the second round after missing with a wild hook and was still having difficulty landing clean punches on Cotto. Geale did connect with a solid straight right in the third round to Cotto’s temple, but Cotto still controlled that round with more effective and clean shots.
Cotto showed good movement in the early parts of the fourth round and was very light on his feet. He connected with a terrific left hook that sent Geale crashing backwards to the mat. Geale was able to get back to his feet but was hurt badly. Cotto jumped on Geale when he got back to his feet and landed vicious hooks to the head and body of Geale before Geale went down again.
Geale got up before the count of ten but was pacing around and looked badly hurt.
The referee wisely waived off the fight as Geale was still hurt from those two knockdowns. Miguel Cotto wins by TKO at 1:28 of round four.
Afterwards Cotto gave a lot of credit to Freddie Roach and said choosing Freddie Roach to train him was one of the best moves of his career. Cotto was asked about a potential fight with Canelo Alvarez and he seemed very open to it as his next fight.
When he was asked about a fight with Gennady Golovkin he was a little more evasive, but said he will fight Golovkin after he fights Canelo.
The middleweight division is suddenly one of the hottest divisions in boxing.
Undercard Quick Results:
Shawn Simpson (1-0) defeated David Simon (0-2) in the junior featherweight division by TKO at 2:05 of the fourth round.
Angel Luna (11-1-1) defeated Jose Lopez (15-1-1) by unanimous decision with scores of 58-53, 58-53, and 57-54 in the junior lightweight division.
Junior Younan (7-0) defeated Mike Sawyer (6-4) in the light heavyweight division by TKO at 2:29 of the second round.
Zhang Zhilei (4-0) defeated Glen Thomas (1-4) in the heavyweight division by unanimous decision with scores of 40-33 on all three scorecards.
Vargas (29-9-2) defeated Wilfredo Vasquez Jr. (24-5-1) by unanimous decision with scores of 79-73, 78-74, and 77-74.
