Some advice for young, promising fighters: Avoid getting in the ring with Miguel Cotto. It could be hazardous to one's career.

Cotto is a 26-year-old Puerto Rican who delivers vicious body punches and nasty hooks. His latest victory came December 2 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he pummeled tough welterweight Carlos Quintana and won in five rounds.

The victory gave Cotto a second world title and his first million-dollar payday. It also was considered his coming-of-age moment.

Now, Cotto (28-0, 23 KOs) is hoping to cash in, with the goal of one day supplanting Floyd Mayweather as boxing's best pound-for-pound fighter.

"All the good boxers, I know I can fight with them," Cotto said in an interview from his home in Caguas, Puerto Rico. "I know I can beat them. I have no doubts."

Cotto doesn't like to simply beat opponents, he likes to destroy them. But he is modest and soft-spoken, going about his work without the hyperbolic rhetoric of a Bernard Hopkins or James Toney.

"I don't like to talk ," said Cotto, who starting boxing at age 11 to lose weight.

Cotto fights with a punishing style that disfigures the faces of foes. He declines to compare himself to any one boxer, although his relentless ring stalking and trademark body shots make him more Tony Zale than Marvin Hagler.

Like Zale, a middleweight champion in the 1940s, Cotto prefers attacking the body. He's knocked out about a half dozen fighters digging to the body like a backhoe.

He has dispatched everybody in front of him in a stretch of impressive wins over the previous two years. But Cotto points to three recent victories that have helped him mature into a seasoned boxer.

Against Ricard Torres last year, Cotto was knocked down and staggered but recovered to win when the fight was stopped in the seventh.

"I had two or three bad moments," Cotto said. "I survived and won the fight."

In June, he beat the loquacious and speedy Paulie Malignaggi of Brooklyn. Cotto said he had to tune out Malignaggi, who tried to distract him with verbal jabs.

"I had to keep my focus," Cotto said.

1

2