By Robert “Big Moe” Elmore: When I saw that former junior middleweight champ Miguel Cotto was fighting “regular” WBA champ Austin Trout, it brought a smile to my face. I wrote an article titled “Cotto was probably never a serious Option for Pacquaio” and I now I feel vindicated.

Honestly, I didn’t care who Cotto fought just as long as he stuck to his guns and could finally dictate things on his own terms. And this time he doesn’t have WBO president and CEO of Top Rank breathing down on him trying to get him to fight Manny Pacquiao. I won’t spend much time on this but the proof is right here (Go to Google and type in Interview with WBO president Valcarcel regarding Pacquaio) and you’ll see it for yourselves. The interview was given by Dr. Allan Recto on Tuesday July 8th 2009. Now most won’t look this up, but whatever; back to the point.

Cotto broke away from Top Rank on December of last year and enjoyed financial success as well as much respect from the public in his fight against Floyd Mayweather. It seems he’s about to enjoy it a little more. But Cotto killed two Top Rank birds with one stone.

First, he silenced Arum on using him as a smoke screen for the Pick-a-Partner for Pacquiao sweepstakes. Cotto was mentioned with Tim Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez. Second, it forces Top Rank to come out and say “They have chosen Marquez” for whatever reasons.

Again in my humble opinion, it was Marquez all along. According to Arum, their third fight did 1.4 million buys (which I will take as grain of salt because no “official” numbers were released). Plus Marquez is a Top Rank employee so the money is still in house. Arum may throw together a couple fights where it doesn’t cost him that much such to help get his fighters out there. But Pac’s last seven fights have been in house. Word on the street is Pac’s contract is up next year. Hopefully Pac will stand his ground and use his own company to promote his fights should he choose to fight on.

Cotto mentioned the weight as being one of the problems. How come Pac couldn’t return the favor? Miguel moved down in their first match so why couldn’t he move up? The Pac faithful say he can beat Cotto at any weight. Well, this was his chance and he didn’t take it. I was really never a big Cotto fan but he sure has gained my respect from the stance he took concerning his career. Now I understand everyone is not meant to have their own promotion company, but in a case of Cotto, it’s very good.