Trainer predicts Pacquiao defeat

MANILA, Philippines - Legendary trainer Emmanuel Steward said Manny Pacquiao, who’s never been knocked out in the last 10 years, will go down when he fights Miguel Cotto on Nov. 14 in Las Vegas.

Steward, who has trained champions like Thomas Hearns, Oscar dela Hoya and Lennox Lewis, said Cotto, the WBO welterweight champion from Puerto Rico, would prove him right.

The topnotch boxing commentator with HBO is sticking his neck out on this one, also saying that if given the chance to work with Cotto, he’d make sure that Pacquiao falls.

“If we reach an agreement to work together, I have no doubt that Miguel would knock out Pacquiao,” Steward told fighthype.com yesterday.

“I’m one of the few people that give Miguel a big chance in that fight because of his boxing. Miguel is perhaps the best body puncher in the sport.

“I have seen some things that I can improve and I know that he can knock him out. I’m a big fan of Miguel because he never refuses to fight the best,” he added.

Steward has worked Pacquiao’s fights the last few years. He was there when the Pinoy icon defeated some of the greatest fighters of his era and became pound-for-pound king.

But he insisted that Cotto, bigger and younger than Pacquiao, deserves a little more as far as the odds, placing the Flipino as a strong 2-1 favorite, is concerned.

Pacquiao has won his last 10 fights, and the last time he lost was to Erik Morales in March of 2005. It was in Sept. 17, 1999 when Pacquiao was knocked out for the last time.

Pacquiao failed to make weight against Medgoen Singsurat, and was stripped of his WBC flyweight champion when he climbed the ring at the Metropolitan Stadium in Thailand.

Drained and bitter, Pacquiao was knocked out in the third round by a clean body shot.

“They don’t give Miguel the credit he deserves and I know that many people don’t give him a chance to win against Pacquiao, but I do,” said Steward.

It’s the same type of body shot Ricky Hatton and the rest had hoped to land on Pacquiao, but each time they were proven terribly wrong.

Steward thinks otherwise.