Eight days before his fight with Zab Judah at Madison Square Garden, Miguel Cotto arrived in New York and began something of a barnstorming tour.
The WBA welterweight champion attended a street festival in the Bronx, where he was mobbed by an adoring crowd estimated at more than 20,000.
He threw out the first pitch at a game at Shea Stadium, accompanied by his slugger pals, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado of the New York Mets.
He did the weather for a local television station. He's tooled around Manhattan in a custom-painted bus adorned with an oversized image of himself and a logo promoting his fight.
And even as fight time rapidly approaches on Saturday, Cotto, 26, works the telephones, doing last-minute interviews.
He's promoting himself as if his paycheck depends upon it even though more than 90 percent of the tickets were sold before he ever left Puerto Rican soil and flew to New York.
The bout is on HBO Pay-Per-View and Cotto is more than willing to do his share to land every
Read More »from The next big thing?