[Lobowolf]

Severe overlay on Cotto in the early action (he's about a 2-1 underdog). This is presumably due to a few factors:

1) Pacquiao is more well-known and more charismatic. The "publicity bias" often makes for a good anti-bet. If you'd bet $100 against Mike Tyson every time he fought, you'd have made several thousand dollars over the course of his career, even though he won 50 of his 56 fights.

2) Pacquiao's recent destruction of Ricky Hatton. Nice win, but Hatton was made to order for Pacqiao. Cotto is a natural welterweight who has fought much stiffer competition than Hatton.

3) Cotto's recent loss to Antonio Margarito. This can be discounted in light of the "plaster scandal" and Margarito's purportedly loaded gloves.

The odds should probably drop to something more like 3-2 by fight time (November). Even at that price, I think Cotto would be an overlay. At 2-1, it's a no-brainer.

[jdonn]

Lobowolf, on Jul 23 2009, 01:06 PM, said:

2) Pacquiao's recent destruction of Ricky Hatton. Nice win, but Hatton was made to order for Pacqiao. Cotto is a natural welterweight who has fought much stiffer competition than Hatton.

I'm no boxing expert, but Hatton is 45-2 and with the two losses coming to Manny Pacqiao and Floyd Mayweather. Made to order? Stiffer competition?

[Lobowolf]

jdonn, on Jul 23 2009, 01:35 PM, said:

Lobowolf, on Jul 23 2009, 01:06 PM, said:

2)  Pacquiao's recent destruction of Ricky Hatton.  Nice win, but Hatton was made to order for Pacqiao.  Cotto is a natural welterweight who has fought much stiffer competition than Hatton.

I'm no boxing expert, but Hatton is 45-2 and with the two losses coming to Manny Pacqiao and Floyd Mayweather. Made to order? Stiffer competition?

Sorry...you're quite correct. I should have said that Cotto has beaten much stiffer competition than Hatton has (in particular Shane Mosley).

Hatton was made to order for Pacquiao in that he has very limited defense, and looked very bad against Mayweather, whose primary attribute is his phenomenal hand speed. Similarly, Pacquiao has great hand speed and throws tons of punches. Hatton pretty much has one direction -- forward. So he walked into a bunch of Pacquiao's punches. The trade-off for Hatton is that he has very good punching power. Since Pacquiao didn't get hurt by De La Hoya, who is one of the hardest hitting punchers at a higher weight, it was pretty unlikely that he'd get hurt by Hatton at 140. So Pacquiao had a guy who was going to come right to him, probably wouldn't be able to hurt him, didn't have much defense, and had trouble the previous time he faced a top fighter with good handspeed. Hatton is very good, but he matched up poorly with Pacquiao and played right into his strengths. Cotto plays a little defense, and he moves in other directions that forward.

[jdonn]

My feeling is that you are working with much too small of a sample size to draw these conclusions (this fighter has a style that was a problem for someone in one other fight, etc), and that a comparison to a fight with De La Hoya means nothing since he was distracted during the fight by his walker and his dentures. However I do agree with you that the odds will drop by fight time, your point 1) was very true.

[el mister]

Pacquiao v Cotto sounds like a bridge to far for the wee man, but I thought that about DLH and Hatton. Cotto, though, is a proper welter in his prime - seems like it will be too much. Didn't Pac start out around minimum weight or close to?

I've followed Hatton's career pretty closely and it's apparent, in retrospect, that the Tzuyu fight was the pinnacle of his career. He's been slowly deteriorating since that night in Manchester. Two losses against the greatest pfp fighters of your era is no disgrace, but it seems that his punch resistance has now eroded quite badly. He always had a nice beard, and needed it with his style, but that fight with Pac has exposed him.

There was talk about matching him up with Amir Khan, a young UK fighter who just won his first title, but Hatton wasn't interested. Khan has superb skills, but a very suspect chin- I reckon even now Hatton might take him. His lack of interest signals that Hatton is about ready to hang them up.

[Lobowolf]

el mister, on Jul 23 2009, 04:04 PM, said:

Pacquiao v Cotto sounds like a bridge to far for the wee man, but I thought that about DLH and Hatton. Cotto, though, is a proper welter in his prime - seems like it will be too much. Didn't Pac start out around minimum weight or close to?

I've followed Hatton's career pretty closely and it's apparent, in retrospect, that the Tzuyu fight was the pinnacle of his career. He's been slowly deteriorating since that night in Manchester. Two losses against the greatest pfp fighters of your era is no disgrace, but it seems that his punch resistance has now eroded quite badly. He always had a nice beard, and needed it with his style, but that fight with Pac has exposed him.

There was talk about matching him up with Amir Khan, a young UK fighter who just one his first title, but Hatton wasn't interested. Khan has superb skills, but a very suspect chin- I reckon even now Hatton might take him. His lack of interest signals that Hatton is about ready to hang them up.

Agree with just about all of this. Khan would be a great matchup for Hatton; I think Hatton would take him in the same way he handled Paul Malignaggi. I don't know if the Pacquiao loss made him reassess his career, or if he can't gear up for lesser guys know that he's had his shots against the best of the best. Maybe he's just regrouping.

[luke warm]

hatton is a good fighter, the kind that can beat almost anyone on a given night... it was just his bad luck that pac and mayweather are so damn good that "any given night" might never occur, not against those two... as for cotto, i personally think pac will win the fight although they're fighting at cotto's natural weight

[Lobowolf]

luke warm, on Jul 23 2009, 05:02 PM, said:

hatton is a good fighter, the kind that can beat almost anyone on a given night... it was just his bad luck that pac and mayweather are so damn good that "any given night" might never occur, not against those two... as for cotto, i personally think pac will win the fight although they're fighting at cotto's natural weight

Cotto is coming down 2 pounds, to 145, for what it's worth.

Yes, Hatton is unlucky that the two best pound-for-pound fighters of the last several years happened to be around his weight. But he's even more unlucky that the style clash worked strongly against him, also.

A parallel might be Joe Frazier, who was probably the third-best heavyweight between, say, Sonny Liston and Larry Holmes (a decent time span). Frazier's results against the two guys better than he was (Ali and Foreman) couldn't have been more different. He gave Ali three great fights (ok, 2 great ones and a good one), winning one of them, and being very competitive in the other two. Foreman, on the other hand, just destroyed him, twice. He was dropped 6 times in a round and a half in the first fight. Pacuiao and Mayweather were both Foremans to Hatton's Frazier. Hatton could have looked a lot better against a fighter as good as those 2, but with different strengths and weaknesses. That is to say, he could have looked like Frazier against Ali, but instead, he looked like Frazier against Foreman.

The early odds in Paciquao-Cotto suggest strongly to me that people are looking at Pacquiao-Hatton and extrapolating too much about Pacquiao. Similarly, after dismantling a made-to-order-for-him Frazier, George Foreman was installed as a 3-1 favorite over Ali. I'm actually making the critique Josh made of my analysis - concluding too much from a small sample. I'm just applying it to bettors who (I believe) are concluding too much from Pacquiao-Hatton. The skill difference between Foreman and Frazier wasn't that tremendous; it was just that when they were matched head-to-head, Frazier's weaknesses and Foreman's strengths were magnified. Head to head results do say a lot about ability, but they say a lot about style, too. Cotto is a very different fighter than Hatton, apart from skill level, and that difference will make him a tougher opponent for Pacquiao than Hatton was.

[luke warm]

well that's true, the cliche that styles make fights is not wrong