Pacquiao vs. Cotto: Battle of the bad tattoos

This Saturday night is when the big fight goes down: Manny Pacquao vs. Miguel Cotto, which is slated to be one of the best match-ups in the history of boxing. Both fighters are extremely skilled and well trained for the battle at hand, but there is one battle that no one has mentioned yet: who has the worst tattoos?

Miguel Cotto: the monster of a man from Puerto Rico. 37 wins (27 by KO), and only one loss. His tattoos are not bad in the technical sense, but at the tender age of 29 his tattoos scream “hey look at me, I was tattooed in the 90′s!” The only problem is that they’re recent. His arms, neck, and back are chalk full of the “corny, played-out tattoo encyclopedia: tribal designs, Japanese kanji, stupid scorpions, you name it.



Manny Pacquiao: fast, fearless, as seasoned of a fighter as there is, with a record of 49 wins (37 by KO), 3 losses, and 2 draws. Now his tattoos….his are just bad. There’s absolutely no way that someone in an actual tattoo parlor did them. Can’t find any proof that he did hard time, but it would for sure explain his tattoos.

So let’s examine this shall we? Cotto definitely wins on the “technical” side. I mean, though he has some of the corniest, trendiest, tattoos ever, they were clearly done by a professional. The lines are clean, the colors are dark, and it looks exactly like what he probably asked for, though other than the rosary, the majority of his tattoos were “in style” about 10-15 years ago. As a man with a few pieces of skin art, I am so happy I managed to dodge this bullet. Other than the tattoo of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes that I got when I was 16, (which still isn’t THAT bad, but is clearly my worst tattoo) I refrained from any “trendy” tattoos, which makes me very happy when I am admiring my own art gallery. There are millions of people that went full throttle on the Tribal tattoos, the arm bands, the Japanese Kanjis, etc. Hopefully one day these will have a nostalgic quality, like the sailor tattoos of the older generations.

Now Manny has another problem: his tattoos look like garbage. The one on his arm is bad, but ok and I’m sure it’s his kids or something. The one above that, on his shoulder is awful. He needs to have that covered up. The one on his chest is a boxing glove, but it looked like his blind friend did it with his feet. He should have that re-done by a professional. The one on his other arm, I can’t even make that out. He should have that lazered off and then do something else. But though his tattoos suck technically, he wins in the category of originality. He will never be one of those aforementioned clowns walking around, looking like they just walked off the set of “Dude where’s my Car.”

So who is the champ? Is it the hard hitting, played out fury of the tribal sideshow that is Miguel Cotto, or is it the faded, ink-blob, prison tattooed Manny Pacquiao? I will let you all be the judge.