The fight started with Cotto landing a cracking jab that caught Pacquiao’s attention, but ended with referee Kenny Bayless stopping the fight in the 12th round, as Pacquiao landed a barrage of punches on the Puerto Rican who was so badly torn up and trailing big time in the score cards that it didn’t make sense to have him endure any more punishment.

Throughout the fight, Cotto showed his big champion’s heart, as he continued fighting despite getting ripped apart and bloodied as badly as he had been against Margarito.  Only this time, there was no plaster used.  It was pure Pacquiao power.

Despite being knocked down in the third and fourth rounds, a game Cotto tried to make a fight out of it, but no sooner than he started getting into a rhythm in each round did Manny begin his patented furious multiple angle attacks.  Cotto could not mount a sustained attack.  “I didn’t know from where the punches were coming,” an exasperated Cotto said after the fight.

So badly ripped up was Cotto’s face, and so devastating was Pacquiao’s attack that Cotto’s wife shuttled her son out of the arena after the ninth round.  She knew it was over and did not want her son to witness a potential devastating knockout like the one Hatton suffered.  Though Cotto didn’t crash to the canvas as did Hatton, he was reduced to a shell of himself, consistently backpedaling to survive, and having to reassess at the end of each round if he should continue fighting.

Cotto’s team wanted to stop it after the tenth, and they decided to go one more round.  After a decent showing, i.e. he didn’t get knocked out, in the 11th round, team Cotto decided to come out for the 12th and final round.  The inevitable happened.  Pacquiao unleashed a barrage of punches and referee Kenny Bayless had no choice but to step in and end Cotto’s futile last stand.  No one has ever dominated Cotto in the manner in which Manny did.  In his win, Margarito no doubt used plaster; but Manny, he simply used pure, raw, explosive power.  For most of the night, Cotto looked like an overmatched amateur. 

In the end, Cotto was a swollen mass, cut everywhere and bleeding as profusely as he had when he fought Margarito.  The little fighter from the flyweight division who had risen up the ranks all the way to the welterweight division had accomplished what the critics said couldn’t be done, but what fight fans knew was a given: Manny by knockout. Naysayers are now running away, tails tucked between their legs.  Even Emmanuel Stewart, who doesn’t give Manny much credit, couldn’t help but be impressed.  He should be.  Given the opportunity, Manny might just knock out his beloved Tommy.  And Angelo Dundee is wrong.  Again.  He’s been always wrong, batting a big fat zero, in his predictions of Pacquiao’s fights.

With the win, Manny Pacquiao now stands in a class of his own, being the only boxer in history to have won seven championships in seven different weight divisions.  History has been made, and there can be no more doubt that Manny Pacquiao deserves his place in the annals of boxing history.  He is arguably one of the top boxers, if not the best to have ever laced on a pair of gloves.  His body of work speaks for itself, and Cotto himself concedes that “Manny Pacquiao is one of the best boxers I ever fought.”  And Cotto has fought the best.