Cotto vs. Saul Alvarez: Is there still a demand for this fight?

By Boxing News - 01/07/2013 - Comments

cotto444By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer has been pretty transparent about his noninterest in matching WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo”Alvarez against arguably the best fighter in the 154 pound division in WBA champion Austin Trout. Schaefer is talking about wanting to get a big fight for Canelo for his next fight in March or May.

However, there are no big fights out there for Canelo at 154 unless he’s thinking about still matching Canelo with the recently beaten Miguel Cotto. Schaefer is talking as if Canelo’s next opponent will be someone with a big enough name to make the May 4th fight card, headlined by Floyd Mayweather Jr, a highly successful one.

There’s really no one that has a big enough name to do that at 154, and the only two big names at 147 are Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, and neither of them are going to be fighting Canelo. So, unless Schaefer is going to match Canelo against Cotto, then he’s talking nonsense about the card being a huge one.

The question is will boxing fans get excited about seeing Canelo face a guy that has lost his last two fights in Miguel Cotto? If that’s who Schaefer is referring to as Canelo’s next opponent then I think it’s pretty sad because it sends a wrong message to fight fans. If the idea is to reward fighters for doing well and winning their fights then it should be Trout gets the fight with Canelo.

Matching Canelo with Cotto is a case of rewarding the loser by having him get the fight off two losses. That just looks like a business move instead of sporting move. It’s like Golden Boy matching Danny Garcia against 35-year-old Zab Judah instead of Lucas Matthysse. Judah, who recently knocked out by Amir Khan, has the bigger name than Matthysse, so he gets the fight.

If Cotto gets to face Canelo off consecutive losses, then it looks like another business move rather than a sporting one. You wouldn’t see stuff like this in basketball and football. In those sports, the winners move on and the losers are left behind, but in boxing it seems to be the reverse of that. It’s more like a popularity contest where if one guy is more recognizable than the other, he gets the fight. I think that’s bad for the sport because it makes it like professional wrestling in a way.



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