MIGUEL COTTO TKO end of 5 ALFONSO GOMEZ

Miguel Cotto just seems to get better all the time. He was faster and slicker than I have ever seen him in his five-round win over game but outclassed Alfonso Gomez in HBO’s welterweight title main event on Saturday night. The methodical, break-them-down fighter of his early career has evolved into a multidimensional boxer-fighter who can, as they say, do it all.

Gomez was just as game and willing as I had expected him to be but Cotto was on a far higher level. It was master against pupil, a latter-day version of Kid Gavilan’s famous beatdown of Chuck Davey.

Cotto’s combination punching and hand speed were breathtaking, while his left jab has developed into a jarring weapon, quite possibly as hard as the right hand of some fighters. You don’t often see a fighter knocked down by a jab, but Gomez was, in the fifth round, by which time everyone had seen enough. There was no protest from Gomez when the ringside doctor decided that the fight should be stopped before the start of the sixth. Really, it could have been stopped at the end of the third after Cotto's brutal left hook to the body sank Gomez to the canvas, to be saved by the bell.

It was not as if Gomez fought badly. He jabbed, hooked, threw right hands, and gave it his best effort, but Cotto was vastly superior in every aspect of the game.

By the fourth Gomez was looking beaten up and bereft of ideas, a lost and weary traveller in a strange land. All he had was his big heart and toughness, and it seemed to me in the fifth that Cotto did not wish to punish him any more. When he knocked Gomez down with the jab it appeared almost unintentional. The stoppage at the end of the round was a relief.

Now Cotto is to meet Tijuana’s Antonio Margarito in a clash that will be as eagerly anticipated as any big fight in recent years. As long as compelling fights such as Cotto versus Margarito continue to be made, boxing will be just fine.