By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Gary Shaw wasn’t overly impressed by Miguel Cotto’s destruction of Sergio Martinez.

More than anything, Shaw, whose New Jersey-based company promotes Daniel Geale, considers Cotto’s technical knockout of Martinez an indictment of the Argentine southpaw’s physical condition entering their WBC middleweight title fight last June 7 at Madison Square Garden. Though Martinez honorably refused to use it as an excuse, his surgically repaired right knee clearly hindered him during his loss to Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs).

“I don’t take anything away from Cotto,” Shaw said before a press conference Tuesday in Manhattan to promote the Cotto-Geale middleweight title fight Saturday night at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center (HBO; 10:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. PT). “I like Cotto on a personal level. I think he’s a great champion and is going to be a Hall-of-Famer. But that Martinez was just a shot fighter, so I don’t give that fight any credence at all. … It wasn’t a fight. It was a one-legged fighter coming in, and Freddie [Roach] and Cotto took advantage of it, to their credit.”

Puerto Rico’s Cotto, a 2-1 underdog entering their fight, dropped Martinez three times in the first round and once in the ninth. Pablo Sarmiento, Martinez’s trainer, instructed referee Michael Griffin to stop the surprisingly one-sided bout as Martinez prepared to leave his corner for the beginning of the 10th round.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing