Presenting the year’s biggest fight

If there’s anything to reincarnation, and if I straighten up real soon, I like to imagine I’ll come back as a Miguel Cotto fan. No, it’s not quite nirvana, but it’s a sight better than this jaded boxing-writer existence a past life of apparently unthinkable transgressions got me.

I kid. This boxing-writing gig is splendid. In exchange for objectivity – forgoing a fanatic’s joy and grief – I win a credential to see a brutal craft plied heroically. Still, I do wish my first glimpse of Cotto had been through a fan’s eyes.

Accusations of his protected status happened early: Promoter Top Rank fluffs Cotto’s record with iffy opponents! If this were ever a fair criticism, it got corrected. In the last two years Cotto has fought three of The Ring Ratings’ four best welterweights – and the fourth doesn’t fight welterweights. No fighter has gone in tougher than Cotto.

Things get no easier Saturday when Cotto defends his WBO welterweight title against the best fighter in the world, Manny Pacquiao, at MGM Grand – in the biggest fight of 2009. Cotto does so at a catch weight of 145 pounds, two below the rightful limit of his weight class. And unlike the guy The Ring inexplicably ranks ahead of him, Cotto will make weight.

It will be the second time I attend a Cotto fight this year. It will be the second time I do not fret about being objective. I have no rooting interest whatever. Cotto is not charismatic enough for adoration. And exceptional as he is, Pacquiao no longer enjoys the underdog appeal that marked his fight with Oscar De La Hoya. Both are great for our sport; a win for either is a win for boxing.

But Pacquiao is by far the more likable. His disarming smile never fails to charm. How can a man of such stature – more famous in the Philippines than any American in these United States – exude such humility?

Cotto, on the other hand, gives us nothing to go on. He loves his children. He has few friends. He recently changed trainers. He sprinkles homoeroticism on his dealings with a 400-pound member of the entourage. And he’s the dullest prizefighter on Twitter.

“Getting ready to go to the gym/ Preparandome para ir al gimnasio,” tweets @RealMiguelCotto six times a week. Whenever he updates his status, Cotto is going to the gym, arriving at the gym, at the gym, or coming from the gym.

And you know what? That’s fine by me.

Leave the performer on stage. Better advice in the internet era cannot be attained. While other prizefighters jet about the fruited plain, call-out football players or raise awareness for humanitarian crises, Cotto goes to the gym. What more does any wise boxing fan need to know?

On Oct. 21, Philip Roth published a novel called “The Humbling.” It was another way-too-thin rewrite of another scene from Roth’s 14-year-old masterwork, “Sabbath’s Theater.” Nothing about that opinion would change if I learned Roth spent last night in a solo performance of “King Lear on the Pole” at the After Dark lounge in Newark. The only thing Roth will be remembered for is the words he publishes.

Cotto grasps this better than most athletes. He realizes he has at most 12 years to leave an indelible mark on the craft at which he is best. What he does in the ring will be the measure legacy takes of him. He’ll not retire as prizefighting’s richest or best. But he will have left his fans with a series of images, in both victory and defeat, for which they never have to apologize.

None of this discredits Manny Pacquiao. By the end of his career he will have touched far more lives in a constructive way than Cotto has. Pacquiao is every good thing people write about him – including unbeatable.

No, much as I admire Cotto, I do not imagine him beating Pacquiao, Saturday. I don’t even have a workable game plan in mind for Cotto; I’ll not sit in MGM Grand and nod approvingly or frown concernedly, whatever Cotto does.

But Cotto’s dad did touch on an interesting tactic in the second episode of this HBO “24/7” tetralogy. He alluded to a hook thrown at the Filipino’s lead shoulder. That’s a page out of Juan Manuel Marquez’s book. It deserves consideration.

Stepping outside Pacquiao’s right foot and throwing a right cross – the Boxing101 way to fight a southpaw – is a nonstarter. Even if your lead foot is somehow faster than Pacquiao’s, there’s no way your right hand is faster than his left. You might be able to get your left glove outside his right shoulder before he blasts you with a left cross, though. If you can do that, you can hook to his shoulder and spin his body against his left hand. But you’ve got to get the drop on him to do it.

That becomes a trickier proposition every time Pacquiao fights. If he gets the drop on you – and he will, Miguel – the worst thing you can do is move backwards and away. He’ll blitz soon as you step backwards. Instead, borrow some more from Marquez: Move forwards, down and to your right. Send Pacquiao, in all his eagerness, over your left shoulder. And then body him; let him know he’s in the ring with the biggest man he’s ever faced.

Is that how Cotto will beat Pacquiao? I doubt it. Pacquiao is a force of nature till proven otherwise. So I’ll take him: UD-12.

But no matter what happens Saturday, I’ll be grateful to Miguel Cotto. For the second time in 2009, I’ll have seen a legitimate welterweight championship fight, without the burden of caring who wins. Maybe that past life wasn’t so misspent after all.

Bart Barry can be reached at Twitter.com/bartbarry

Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank