\u00a0Cotto, with a ferocious left hook and punishing combinations, knocked Martinez down three times in the first round, and continued to dominate the scheduled 12-round bout at Madison Square Garden. Martinez’s corner waved an end to the fight as the bell rang for round 10.<\/div>\n
The Argentine, who wore supportive sleeves on both his knees, was cut near his right eye and over his left eye and his knees buckled several times during the one-sided contest.<\/p>\n
Cotto, 33, became the first Puerto Rican ever to win titles in four different weight divisions after previously holding the junior welterweight, welterweight and super welterweight crowns.<\/p>\n
“This is the biggest achievement I ever had in my career,” said Cotto, who improved to 39-4 while the 39-year-old Martinez fell to 51-3-2.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
“I got hit and I never recovered after that. I tried my best,” said Martinez, speaking through a translator. “He caught me cold, he caught me hard at the beginning and I didn’t recover from it.”<\/p>\n
Martinez looked set to continue, despite buckling after another powerful left in the ninth round that the referee ruled a knockdown even though the Argentine did not touch the canvas. But his corner surrendered.<\/p>\n
“More than a boxer, he’s my brother and he’s my friend,” said trainer Pablo Sarmiento.<\/p>\n
Freddie Roach, Cotto’s trainer, said the winner executed the game plan to perfection.<\/p>\n
“I’m really proud of him,” Roach said. “We had a great game plan and he followed it to a tee.”<\/p>\n
Roach said Cotto manoeuvered Martinez masterfully. “He had him moving into the hook all night long,” Roach said. “Miguel is a better boxer than Martinez.”<\/p>\n
Cotto landed twice as many punches in the bout and also proved to be the bigger puncher even though he was fighting at the 160-pound limit for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n
Martinez, 39, has had physical ills to contend with, showing the effects of shoulder and knee operations in holding off Briton Martin Murray in a battle last April in Buenos Aires despite being knocked down in the eighth.<\/p>\n
The loser did not attend the post-fight news conference.<\/p>\n
“Sergio said he had no excuses,” Lou DiBella, the fighter’s promoter, told reporters. “After that first round, he felt dizzy throughout the fight but he wanted to continue.<\/p>\n
“But obviously he was taking a terrible beating.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: Eurosport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Miguel Cotto dominated Sergio Martinez at Madison Square Garden to take the WBC middleweight title and become Puerto Rico\u2019s first four-weight world champion. Miguel Cotto used a furious start to win the World Boxing Council middleweight championship as title holder\u00a0Sergio Martinez\u00a0of Argentina surrendered the crown when he did not answer the bell for the 10th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":23447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,31],"class_list":["post-23446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ghana-news","tag-professor-adei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}