Santiago: Pacquiao in for tough night

Joe Santiago, Miguel Cotto's trainer, says Manny Pacquiao "is in for a tough night" on Nov. 14.

Some have suggested that Manny Pacquiao’s destruction of his last three opponents is tainted at least somewhat by the quality of the opponents. David Diaz has limited talent and both Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton were on the decline.

And someone asked on a conference call Tuesday whether the fact Pacquiao struggled against Juan Manuel Marquez while Floyd Mayweather Jr. thrashed him is a good sign for Cotto.

Joe Santiago, Miguel Cotto’s trainer, wouldn’t bite on either suggestion. He has been as impressed with Pacquiao as most of us have. He’s just more impressed with Cotto, who faces the Filipino icon on Nov. 14 in Las Vegas.

“I wouldn’t say his opponents haven’t been quality fighters,” Santiago said through a translator from Cotto’s training camp in Tampa, Fla. “We know who they are. We know De La Hoya, Hatton. Maybe they didn’t have the best nights of their careers. The way I look at it Miguel Cotto is at the point of his career where he’s at his best. He’s going to show everyone he’s at his best.

“Manny Pacquiao is in for a real tough night. … Cotto is the first true welterweight he’s faced in his career, a young guy who I believe is still in his prime. That’s what Pacquiao’s facing.”

And Cotto also has a little extra motivation. He’s the underdog in this fight, as he was when he fought then-unbeaten countryman Carlos Quintana in 2006 for a vacant welterweight title.

Cotto won when Quintana quit on his stool after the fifth round.

“They were talking about how Quintana would be able to beat Miguel,” Santiagao said. “Miguel took an affront to that. The night of the fight he was so focused on what he wanted to do and was so impressive. This time a lot of people are picking Pacquiao to beat him. He’s motivated by that, no question.

“We know he can win this fight. He would love to show everyone what he’s capable of against this type of opponent. … And he’ll come out with a little extra fire because people say he can’t win.”

And when he does win, Santiago said, he should get all the credit due him.

“One guy is called the best pound for pound,” he said. “We know we have the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world in Miguel Cotto. When the night comes and he wins, everyone will know Puerto Rico has the best fighter pound for pound in the world.”

Diplomacy: Bob Arum, who promotes both Cotto and Pacquaio, was asked about trainer Freddie Roach’s reported prediction that Pacquiao will knock out Cotto in the first round.

Arum had to be careful how he answered.

“I can’t comment on that,” he said. “Yeah, it’s boxing. They fight from the beginning; anything can happen. Miguel can knock out Manny in the first round, and Manny can knock Miguel out in the first round. I don’t think it’s likely. I think Freddie, who is a great trainer, is also a great psychologist. A lot of what Freddie says gets into Miguel’s camp’s head. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s boxing.

“No one knows what the hell will happen in this fight. There are so many different opinions. I can see the fiht going a lot of different ways. That’s why it’s a great fight.

Cut above: Santiago said the gruesome cut above Cotto’s left eye, suffered against Joshua Clottey in June, has healed nicely.

“We were very lucky on the night of the fight,” he said. “We had two good plastic surgeons there. They did excellent work with him. It all came out very nice. I haven’t seen anything at all with the cut. It hasn’t been an issue in camp and I don’t think it will be an issue in the fight.”

Undercard: The two featured televised fights on the undercard are Daniel Santos-Yuri Foreman and Jesus Soto Karass-Alfonso Gomez.

Santos, a Puerto Rican southpaw, will be making the first defense of the junior middleweight title he won when he stopped Joachim Alcine in July. Foreman is an unbeaten Belarus-born Israeli who moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. , to pursue his boxing career.

Soto-Karass and Gomez are both Los Angeles-based Mexicans who are likely to engage in a slugfest.

24/7: The first Pacquiao-Cotto 24/7 episode will be at 10:15 p.m. to 10:45 p.m. ET/ PT on Saturday night.

Arum says it might be the best episode yet of the series, primarily from Pacquiao’s training camp in the Philippines.

“They have unbelievable footage from the Philippines that the news programs didn’t have,” he said. “It shows how devastating the floods were, how Manny coped with the flood, the typhoon. It’s well worth seeing.”


Michael Rosenthal can be reached at RingTVeditor@yahoo.com