LAS VEGAS—Kenny Bayless waved off Saturday’s fight with Manny Pacquiao all over Miguel Cotto, who was trying to escape the Filipino’s fusillade against the ropes.
Should Cotto’s corner have pulled the plug earlier?
Freddie Roach thinks so. So does Manny Pacquiao.
“It’s a good question,” Top Rank chief and fight promoter Bob Arum said, minutes after Pacquiao became the first boxer to win world titles in seven different weight classes after taking Cotto’s WBO welterweight title via a 12th-round technical knockout.
“I know the referee did the right thing in stopping the fight,” Arum added.
Pacquiao said he thought Cotto’s corner would call the fight to a halt in the 11th round. Roach agreed, but said the end should have come earlier.
But before anybody could train their guns at 32-year-old Joe Santiago, who had been vilified for his inexperience in big-time bouts, Cotto owned up to the error.
“I told Joe that I wanted to continue fighting,” said the Puerto Rican star. “It was my decision.”
Roach could have pounced on Cotto’s admission by saying he was right after all. That Santiago wasn’t running the training camp but Cotto.
Roach had been jawing at Santiago in the weeks before the fight, saying the latter simply “put a towel on his shoulder and give his guy a drink and he thinks he’s a trainer.”
Santiago added fuel to the fire when he uttered an invective-laced statement at Roach when Cotto managed to make the weight Friday.
Roach had insisted that Cotto, the former two-division champ, was struggling to make the 145-pound catch weight for the bout.
On Saturday, after Roach guided Pacquiao to a systematic destruction of Cotto, there were no vindictive remarks.
In fact, Roach and Santiago hugged in the middle of the ring after the bout.
Santiago was working in just his second major bout since replacing Evangelista Cotto, the fighter’s uncle, as chief trainer.
A former nutritionist, Santiago had the game plan down pat. But even he was caught unaware by the power Pacquiao brought up with him to the heavier weights.
“We knew Pacquiao had a lot of speed,” said Santiago. “But we didn’t know he could hit hard. He was stronger than we expected.”
