The former No. 1 welterweight and current WBO Welterweight Champion Miguel Cotto will face one of the sternest tests of his career on June 13, 2009 against the African fighter, Joshua Clottey.

The fight will be held a day before the Puerto Rican Day Parade, a celebrated parade in which Puerto Ricans of all classes come out to show their pride. There is music, food, and of course the fabulous Puerto Rican women known for their terrific backsides made famous by the utterly delicious Jennifer Lopez.

Most Puerto Rican fighters would rather die than to lose a fight on the night before this parade as most relish the thought of being on the float the next day with arms raised as a winner and a champion.

Oscar de la Hoya has been known to schedule his biggest, most challenging fights around the celebration of his Mexican heritage, Cinco de Mayo, as a form of self motivation, assuring that pride will give him the extra kick to dig deep when necessary.

TRAINER PROBLEMS AND WOMEN

However, Cotto will be potentially facing a plethora of distractions before his fight with Clottey and, even without them, this fight wouldn't be easy. There's the potential distraction of his personal problems with his uncle and former trainer, Evangelista Cotto.

One must ask if a rumored refusal by the trainer to apply the controversial groin wraps caused the feud.

Has the new trainer agreed to apply the groin wraps?

What about the amount of women at the outdoor training session in the Bronx?

There were voluptuous Puerto Rican women all around with very tight fitting pants, exposing huge rear ends and very enticing bosoms. Every time Cotto would throw a left hook you could hear an "Ay papito, asi, hazlo asi."

These words are very distracting and could linger in his mind throughout the fight. The main distraction might be knowing he got smashed to pieces by Antonio Margarito, and that this fight with Clottey will be his sternest test yet.

DAMAGED GOODS

Antonio Margarito is a former welterweight champion that was recently banned from boxing in 2009, after illegal hardening substances were found in his hand wraps prior to his bout with the current No. 1 welterweight, Shane Mosley.

It is now being speculated by most that Margarito most likely had the illegal substances in his wraps when he unprecedentedly reduced Cotto's face to a pulp, causing Cotto to quit under the barrage of the rock hard punches.

Few fighters in boxing history have been able to recuperate fully from beatings such as the one Cotto took, so it will be interesting to see how he handles Clottey, his first real test after his first loss.

Fighters like Meldrick Taylor, Fernando Vargas, David Reid, Ricardo Mayorga, and even Juan Diaz never seemed the same after getting beaten up for the first time. When I say beaten up, I am referring to those bouts where the fighter is getting hammered on and damaged while suffering continuous trauma without going down.

The referee usually does not stop the fight because the damaged fighters keep returning fire even while getting the worst of it. These fights are more damaging to a fighter than say fights lost by some flash one punch knockout, a la Kostya Tszyu's knockout of Zab Judah, David Tua's knockout of John Ruiz, or even Ike Ibeabuchi's knockout of Chris Byrd.

In those fights the knock out victims went on to have even greater successes than before, and in some cases surpassed their victors in greatness. The fighters previously mentioned, that lost by sustained mauling as opposed to by one punch knockout, were never the same and all went downhill after their losses.

As a common factor, most never showed the same ability to take a punch that they had before having been mauled. A possible example in progress could be Juan Diaz. Although Diaz was not knocked out by Nate Campbell, he was thoroughly beaten to the head and beaten up in general for twelve rounds, and seemed on the verge of getting stopped several times during the fight.

Diaz's fighting heart allowed him to fight to the end, but in Diaz's very next fight he got knocked out for the first time against Juan Manuel Marquez, a smaller fighter coming up from the featherweight division.

Was Marquez just that good or is Diaz damaged goods?

We'll just have to wait and see.

THE PICK

Clottey is a fighter that does everything good and nothing great.

His greatest attributes are his stamina and chin. He is not the most powerful of punchers and, although punches respectably, has not knocked out foes that he should have in Zab Judah and Diego Corrales.

Cotto is the better schooled fighter with extensive amateur experience and also possesses similar speed to Clottey, but with greater power. If Cotto is hurt or stopped by the non-punching Clottey, his days at the top against opponents like Mosley, Berto, or even Pacquiao would appear to be numbered.

I pick a better skilled and rounded Cotto to defeat the iron-chinned Clottey by close decision.