Will Cotto be Saul Alvarez’s sacrificial lamb on May 4th?

By Boxing News - 12/23/2012 - Comments

alvarez4534By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions wants to get a fighter with a name for their young star in the making WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to impress boxing fans against on May 4th when he fights again. Alvarez is being talked about as fighting on the Floyd Mayweather Jr – Robert Guerrero pay per view undercard on HBO at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cotto, 32, is coming off back to back defeats against Mayweather Jr. and Austin Trout, and he’s not in the greatest position career-wise.

Cotto appears to have lost a few steps and he’s at the stage of his career where he needs to either be matched carefully against guys that are beatable for him or against the biggest name possible so he can maximize his paydays with what little time he’s got left. Cotto had mentioned not too long go the idea of him moving in weight to the middleweight division so that he could attempt to capture a fourth world title, but that’s kind of a silly notion now after his loss to Trout.

Golden Boy Promotions don’t appear to be interested in letting Trout fight Saul Alvarez. They want a fighter with a name to face Canelo, and right now Trout doesn’t have a big enough name or a big enough fan base to make him a viable opponent for Canelo. But he’s also not a good option because he actually would have a very good chance of beating Canelo, and that’s something Golden Boy doesn’t want to happen because it would mess up their plans in transitioning Canelo to a top of the bill pay per view star.

Right now, Alvarez is just a co-main event type PPV fighter, but Golden Boy wants to move him to the top spot and for that to happen they need for Alvarez to collect some well known scalps, and that’s where Cotto comes in. He’s well known and has a huge following, so if Alvarez can take him apart then he’ll get a big bump up in popularity among the casual boxing fans because they won’t have a clue that Cotto has been fading as a fighter ever since he was bludgeoned into submission by a prime Antonio Margarito in 2008. Cotto hasn’t looked the same since that fight.

It’s sad that Cotto will likely end up as the opponent for Alvarez because this isn’t a winnable fight for Cotto. He’s lost his last two fights and the last thing he needs is to be put in the position to where he’ll be just the opponent for the guy that Golden Boy wants to create into a star. You hate to see Cotto being used in this capacity because it’s not a good thing for him other than the payday he’ll get.

If Cotto was smart he’d say no to this fight and use his time to fight a few easy opponents while he waits for Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum to match him up with Pacquiao for a big money fight. Cotto will make a lot more money in a Pacquiao fight than he will against Alvarez. That’s the smarter fight for Cotto, and he needs to make sure he puts himself in position to get that fight by not fighting Alvarez and getting beaten for the third straight time.

If Cotto takes the fight with Alvarez he’ll take a beating and end up in a worse position than he is now. He’s lost his last two fights, but if he loses yet another fight he’s going to in trouble career wise.



Comments are closed.