Cotto stops 'Contender' Alfonso Gomez

Miguel Cotto battered Alfonso Gomez for five rounds to retain his WBA welterweight title on Saturday and set up a fight with new IBF champion Antonio Margarito.

Earlier, Margarito dominated Kermit Cintron for the second time, then knocked him out in the sixth round to win the IBF crown at Boardwalk Hall.

Cotto no trouble with the outmanned Gomez and ran his record to 32-0 with 26 knockouts when Dr Mark Schaber stopped the fight after a lopsided fifth round. In that round, Gomez went down for the third time. Gomez’s face was swollen almost from the first time the Puerto Rican star hit him in the mismatch.

By end of the fifth, with the crowd chanting his name, Cotto was backing off, seeing that the one-time participant in The Contender TV show couldn’t contend with his power and precision.

“I wanted to work and do it the right way,” Cotto said of his fourth defense of the title he won in 2006 against Carlos Quintana.

In the third and fourth rounds alone, Cotto outlanded Gomez 108-23, and two of the knockdowns came on body shots. A straight left to the face late in the fifth provided the third knockdown, and Cotto landed 59 percent of his power punches.

“You always worry before you go into a fight,” added Evangelista Cotto, the fighter’s trainer and uncle, “but we knew we had the superior fighter. That was a real beating in there.”

Evangelista Cotto reportedly has been feuding with his nephew and others in the Cotto camp. But there were nothing but smiles for all of them after this fight.

Gomez was disappointed he wasn’t allowed to continue.

“The doctor said I couldn’t see out of my right eye,” he said.

It was a one-sided night. Gomez, of Mexico, never had a chance against the relentless Cotto and, surprisingly, Cintron put up almost no resistance against Margarito.

Margarito Cintron the only previous loss of his career three years ago in the fifth round in a WBO championship bout. This time, the Mexican pummeled the champion from the opening bell, then ended the lopsided fight with a devastating left to the body at 1:57 of the sixth.

Margarito a cut over his left eye for the last three rounds, but it never seemed to bother him. And he opened a cut under Cintron’s left eye in the fifth. By that time, Cintron already was battered.

The fight ended quickly in the sixth after Margarito landed a dozen solid punches, then sent the uppercut directly into Cintron’s ribs. Puerto Rican went down on all fours and never came close to getting up.