Cotto leading candidate for Canelo’s next fight on September 14th

By Boxing News - 04/24/2013 - Comments

cotto5By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions has confirmed that WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will be fighting next on September 14th against a still to be determined opponent and venue. He’s waiting on the results of the Robert Guerrero vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight to try and get the winner of that fight.

Canelo’s manager Eddie Reynoso would like to have Canelo face Mayweather, as would De La Hoya. However, given that Canelo out-weighs Mayweather by 25 pounds when he fights, it’s not likely that Mayweather is going to agree to fight someone with that kind of huge weight advantage over him, just as Canelo would likely never agree to fight cruiserweights Marco Huck and Denis Lebdev, who would have a 25 pound weight advantage over Canelo.

Since Canelo likely would never agree to melting down to 147 and then agreeing to a rehydration clause, the fight between him and Mayweather won’t happen.

The leading candidate for Canelo’s next fight is Miguel Cotto, and even that fight will be very, very difficult to make unless Golden Boy offers a huge guarantee for Cotto to take the fight. He can make a lot of money just fighting normal junior middleweights, so he doesn’t need to fight Canelo to get just a little bit more. I don’t see the point in Canelo fighting Cotto because Trout recently easily beat Cotto last December. Canelo might as well fight Trout again to clear up the controversy of his questionable win over him last Saturday night, but we know Canelo won’t do that. He’s moving on and will take the win regardless of the controversy.

Cotto has lost two out of his last three fights and this is definitely not a good time for him to be taking on someone like Canelo, who wins rounds by landing just a tiny of handful of punches.

You’ve got to figure that Golden Boy will look to put Canelo’s next fight back in Texas so that they can take advantage of his large Mexican fan base over there. But I think Cotto needs to think twice before he agrees to that because he doesn’t need to be in a situation where he’ll be dealing open scoring, and judges giving Canelo rounds where he’s getting out-punched.

Agreeing to fight Canelo in Texas with open scoring would be like Cotto setting himself up for failure. I think Cotto should only fight Canelo if the fight can take place in New York City, WITHOUT open scoring, with different judges than last time Canelo fought, and with a rehydration clause that will keep Canelo well below 170.

There’s no point in Cotto fighting Canelo if the guy is going to balloon up to over 170 and have a weight advantage of 10 pounds with open scoring. Forget that. Cotto needs to get a guarantee of $10 million, no open scoring, no Texas, rehydration limit of only 10 pounds, different judges and the fight taking place in New York City. If Golden Boy and Canelo don’t agree to that then Cotto needs to walk away from the deal.



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