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Teddy Blackburn/Golden Boy Promotions

By Ron Borges

NEW YORK – They have the ideal boxing match at Madison Square Garden Saturday night, which is why they had to open up the mezzanine level seats this week to accommodate what had become an overflow crowd.

The reason why is not the simple jingoism of loyal Puerto Rican fight fans coming to the Garden to support their newest love, WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto. The reason is nobody is quite sure if he’s going to beat three-time world champion Shane Mosley or not but they are sure of one thing. This is going to be a pain game before it’s over.

At 27, Cotto is at the height of his powers, a savage body puncher and a relentless pressure fighter whose golden boxing shoes have only one gear and it’s not reverse. Cotto has strung together 30 straight victories (25 by knockout) by his willingness to endure any punishment, including lifting himself off the canvas after being involuntarily sent there, to methodically break down the men promoter Bob Arum has put in front of him.

He has done this with a mystic’s devotion to body punching and a firm resolve that has allowed him to steady himself after being in serious trouble in fights against Demarcus Corley, Ricardo Torres and Zab Judah and beat back their challenges.

Part of Cotto’s fascination in fact is that there seems to be a vulnerability about him, a sense that at any moment he might take one on the chin that drives him to the floor. It is only then, after he gets up, that the fight begins…or ends.

He has been bloodied, beaten upon and bent over but he has never been defeated. Though when watching him one notes one flaw after another it has always seemed that as the rounds wear on his opponent’s interest in exploiting those weaknesses begins to wane as his ribcage, kidneys and liver begin to ache.

Cotto has a willingness to absorb whatever punishment is demanded of him to get inside and tear at your body like a raging pit bull. By the end of the night you may not like chopped liver but you’ll have one.

Against an opponent as quick, resourceful and dangerous as Mosley (44-4, 37 KO) that approach would seem to require some refinement for Cotto does not have the strongest beard in boxing. The champion has been down several times, rocked by Corley and Torres, and in enough trouble several times against Judah to make one wonder how long it would be before he runs into more than his mind can handle.

Mosley’s supporters believe that is about to happen even though the 36-year-old former champion hasn’t stopped anyone but a well shot Fernando Vargas in six years. They hold this belief because of the combination of Mosley’s hand speed and strength and Cotto’s suspect mandible.

“Everyone knows Cotto’s not going to outbox Shane and he can’t out punch him either so what’s he going to do?’’ asks Mosley’s trainer, Jack Mosley, who also happens to be his father.

Cotto, never one prone to hyperbole, responds simply.

“I have to be at my best to beat Shane Mosley because he’s such a great fighter,’’ he said, “but why change when everything is working the way it should work?’’

Unless Mosley can force him to change no reason but there is an ominous sense that early in the fight Mosley may well do that because he’s a bigger, stronger, smarter and more dangerous version of Judah, someone who will punch more often and more flat-footed than Judah, who nevertheless had Cotto bloody before the champion methodically walked him down and battered him into submission in the 11^th round in June.

Can he do the same to Mosley? At least one person thinks not.

“I’ve watched a lot of his fights,’’ Mosley said of Cotto. “He beats a lot of these guys by his will. His will to win. He’s very strong mentally. He breaks these guys down mentally and eventually they fold in the later rounds and he either knocks them out or wins the fight by beating them down but I can’t see him being stronger than me. I’ve been in the ring with too many big guys to worry about a guy that’s 140 to 147 pounds. Being worried about him working me down and being stronger than me, I just can’t see it.

“I think in general my foot speed is just too fast for him to keep up. If I’m moving around a little bit, giving him little angles here and there, it’s going to mess him up. He’s not going to be able to throw his shots the way he wants to and he’s going to be getting hit by more shots. I’ll definitely be dealing out a lot of heat.’’

Cotto, of course, feels otherwise. His bludgeoning style has never failed him and so he sees no reason this time will be different. While it is true that Mosley is as willing to throw to the body as Cotto, and will surely test the champion there, few would argue that he is the better body puncher and Cotto seems to care little about the price of victory. If he has to be hit to land the crushing body shots he favors round after round he is more than willing to make the sacrifice. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he knows what he is and what he is not and accepts the cost of his victories with resignation.

“I am not the most skilled boxer in the world,’’ Cotto said, “but with hard work I always reach my goals. I will do the same for this fight.

“Everybody knows what type of fighter Mosley is, but everyone knows about my capabilities. He was a great fighter but it’s my moment now.’’

For that to be true, Cotto must do to the best and fastest opponent he has ever faced what he did to Judah in June and to nearly all of his previous victims. He must push him hard, forcing him out of his comfort zone with the power of his body attack, which comes at his opponent in crushing and corrosive waves. Cotto is a storm beating at your ribs, hips and, if need be, areas lower than that.

His way is not a graceful tango but rather a plodding waltz of constant forward motion. The more you seem to hit him the more determined he becomes to dissuade you of the wisdom of that.

Yet Cotto has also shown a vulnerability of chin, which when pared with Mosley’s fast hands adds a compelling aspect to this fight. Will Cotto’s suspect mandible hold up if Mosley finds it the same way Judah did? Cotto insists that’s not the question.

“The question is if Shane Mosley can take a good punch from Miguel Cotto,’’ the champion says dismissively. “I’m a boxer. I’m supposed to take punches. I try to work every boxer in the body because when you work the body your opponent gets tired quickly. I’ll try to do the same in this fight. The question is does he have the capacity to stand up and stay in the fight?’’

That’s a good question and one Cotto will surely ask Mosley at some point. The challenger is no longer so fast that he’s unhittable and he’s no longer the dominate fighter he once was as a lightweight. But as he proved to a spent shell like Fernando Vargas, he still carries with him the best combination of speed and power Cotto has ever faced and he’s more versatile than anyone Cotto has seen because he combines terrific hand speed with impressive use of angles and surprising power that comes not only from the speed of his hands but also from the fact he is unusually strong for a man of his stature.

“He’s not going to box,’’ Jack Mosley said of Cotto. “We both know he has to come inside and try to force his will on Shane. That’s what he’s done with everyone, but that’s a problem for him too because Shane will counter punch him all night, or at least for as long as he can take it.’’

What he’ll also use is a surprising willingness to match body shots with Cotto that goes back to his early days in boxing when Mosley used to regularly spar with two great southern California fighters, Genaro Hernandez and Zack Padilla.

Padilla was a guy who regularly threw 80 to 100 punches a round, many of them to the liver and kidney. Hernandez, the former WBC and WBA super featherweight champion, was the same kind of relentless body puncher. Mosley spent many long days in gyms near his southern California proving grounds taking those body shots as a young fighter and he not only survived but ultimately became a better fighter than either of them because of it. Today he believes Miguel Cotto, though stronger than Padilla or Hernandez, cannot bring anything to the Garden he hasn’t already endured and triumphed over.

“He’s difficult to fight because he’s coming at you and he’s coming to attack you,’’ Mosley conceded, “but it’s not unusual for me to see that kind of fighter. I know what to expect when a guy is pressuring me for the whole 12 rounds.

“I’ve been in there with a lot of Mexican warriors that hit very hard to the body. I can’t say Cotto will be the hardest body puncher I’ve faced. He does seem to be the hardest body puncher of this day and era but I’ve got a thick coat. I’m very strong. I can take a pounding to the body or to the arms or wherever and keep fighting for the whole 12 rounds.’’

What he’ll also be doing is administering a body beating of his own for despite all his speed, Mosley has always punched with harsh authority to the body. As he showed against Oscar De la Hoya, he’s willing to go inside and trade, believing though he’ll be hit his superior hand speed and counter punching will win out.

What that stylistic clash promises is a lively night, one that will decide Mosley’s welterweight future while making clear what to make of Cotto. Is the latter, as Arum has said, “something special’’? Will he be able to absorb the punishment Mosley will inflict upon him, which will be similar to what Judah did but far more consistent and persistent? And through that pain will he continue to be the fighter Arum described as one with “a relentless style. He always presses the attack but he has enough movement to avoid punches. It’s not like he comes straight at you. He has power, intelligence and ring smarts’’?

Certainly Mosley has proven long ago that he has all those traits. The fact he’s nine years older makes age an issue but it also makes experience an issue because even Cotto concedes Mosley has been in with better competition and will enter the ring knowing there is nothing Cotto will try that he hasn’t seen, and countered, before. But Miguel Cotto has a belief that none of this will matter because, in the end, he knows why he is coming to Madison Square Garden.

“My power and his experience, that’s the great ingredient in this fight,’’ Cotto said. “I’m going to climb into the ring the stronger fighter and the hungrier fighter. I put pressure on everyone I’ve fought. He’s fought many great fighters but after this fight the people will see what I’m made of.’’

Although it is likely the early rounds will not go well for Cotto, in the end he will survive them. When he does the real fight will begin. A fight a 36-year-old former champion would be better off without.