Cotto hasn’t decided who he plans on fighting next

By Boxing News - 12/20/2012 - Comments

cotto43By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA Super World light middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-4, 30 KO’s) plans on continuing his boxing career despite suffering a fairly one-sided defeat to WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout earlier this month on December 1st in Madison Square Garden in New York. Cotto says he still hasn’t seen the fight yet, but he plans on watching it one of these days. He’s not sure who his next opponent will be when he does step back inside the ring.

Speaking with primerahora.com, Cotto said “I will take several months off. Boxing is out of the picture for now. I will make an announcement when we have something planned. We do not know [when]. We will discuss later.”

Had Cotto beaten Trout, he would have had an opportunity to face WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a big pay per view bout that would have made both fighters a great deal of money. However, the loss ruined the plans for this fight.

Initially, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer said that a Cotto-Alvarez fight was still possible for May 4th, 2013, but Alvarez later ruled out the idea of him facing Cotto on this date. Alvarez is instead hoping to get a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Cotto’s options for his next fight aren’t as good as he might like them to be.

If he’s interested in picking up a title at 154, he might go after a fight with WBO junior middleweight champion Zaurbek Baysangurov, but that wouldn’t be a bout that would attract a whole lot of interest because Baysangurov isn’t well known in the United States. It won’t be a good idea for Cotto to face the top junior middleweights Erislandy Lara and Vanes Martirosyan because the risk would be too high that Cotto would get beaten again.

The bad part about Cotto facing Trout is that he got far less money for that fight than he would have received had Cotto fought a rematch with Manny Pacquiao. Cotto was reportedly offered $13 million for the Pacquiao rematch, which was far more than what Cotto got for his fight with Trout.

In hindsight, it just looks like Cotto made a really bad business decision by fighting Trout for the smaller money. If Cotto was going to get beaten he might as well have taken the big money than walking away from a huge offer from Pacquiao’s promoter.



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