Cotto sharpens other skills for Judah bout

Fighters love to strut their stuff at news conferences, bolstering their confidence, entertaining their egos and playing with their opponent’s minds. They pull up their shirts to reveal washboard stomachs or flex their biceps to demonstrate bulging muscles.

At Wednesday’s Madison Square Garden news conference for tonight’s boxing show, Miguel Cotto, who will defend his World Boxing Assn. welterweight title against Zab Judah, did some showing off of his own.

He spoke to the media.

In English.

Cotto, a Puerto Rican, has been in training of a very different nature from boxing to learn the language and build the confidence to use it in a public setting.

“I used to think that if I don’t have Ricardo [Jimenez, a Spanish-speaking publicist] beside me, I can’t do this,” Cotto said in English. “This is going to make me more popular.”

It’s all part of what Cotto’s promoter, Bob Arum, is calling the fighter’s “coming-out party” tonight. A huge star back home and a familiar figure among Hispanic boxing fans, Cotto is still relatively unknown in the rest of this country despite a 29-0 record with 24 knockouts, a World Boxing Organization junior-welterweight title, which he successfully defended six times, and his current title, which he is defending for the second time.

Arum is hoping to bring Cotto, who weighed in at 146 1/2 pounds Friday, into a wider spotlight beginning tonight when he takes on his biggest opponent on a national stage.

At this point, more people know Judah, and not necessarily for the right reasons. The Brooklyn native, who weighed in at 145 pounds, has had his shining moments in the ring, having amassed a 34-4 record with two no-contests and 25 knockouts. He’s a former junior-welterweight champion and a former undisputed welterweight titleholder.

But there have also been dark moments as well, the worst being Judah’s performance in his last fight, a year ago against Floyd Mayweather Jr. A low blow by Judah resulted in a near riot in the ring for which he was suspended for a year.

Judah also lost his previous fight, to Carlos Baldomir, by decision in January 2006.

So Judah sees tonight as his coming-back party.

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Also on tonight’s attractive pay-per-view card is a super-featherweight match between Humberto Soto (41-5-2, one no-decision, 25) and Bobby Pacquiao (27-12-3, 12), brother of Manny; a welterweight fight between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (31-0-1 24) and Grover Wiley (30-9-1, 14), the last man to defeat Chavez’s father, and a super-welterweight bout between Yuri Foreman (22-0, 8) of Russia and Anthony Thompson (23-1, 17).

The preliminary fights are 10 rounds each.

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steve.springer@latimes.com