By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto (37-4, 30 KO’s) has met up with his new trainer Freddie Roach at the Wildcard gym in Los Angeles, California for Cotto to begin training for his October 5th fight against Devlin Rodriguez (28-6-3, 16 KO’s) at the Amway Center, in Orlando, Florida, USA.
Cotto, a millionaire many times over, will reportedly be renting a house near Beverly Hills to stay in while he gets ready for the fight, according to ESPN Deportes.
Roach has put together a special area in the Wildcard gym for Cotto to be secluded during his training, as not to be bothered by the huge daily swarm of media, fans and fighters that invade the gym on a daily basis.
Cotto, 32, is in a situation with this fight where he cannot afford to lose. He’s already lost his last two fights to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Austin Trout, but those are high quality fighters. Rodriguez is a good fighter, but he’s not anywhere near the level of a Mayweather or Trout, as we saw not too long ago with Rodriguez’s lopsided 12 round unanimous decision loss to Trout in June of 2012.
If Cotto can’t even a fighter like Rodriguez, then it’s probably time for him to hang up the gloves, because it would difficult to imagine picturing Cotto getting a rematch with Manny Pacquiao with three straight losses.
It would still be possible, and I wouldn’t put it past Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank to put together a fight between Pacquiao and Cotto even if Cotto loses his next fight to Rodriguez, but I think the pay per view numbers would be far below the 1 million PPV buys their fight had in 2009 when they in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Pacquiao dropped by the Wildcard gym last Friday to see both Roach and Cotto. Pacquiao told Cotto this as quoted by RingTV “Good luck, Miguel, on your fight, and I hope you like working with coach Freddie like I do.”
This will be the first time that Cotto has worked with Roach. Cotto recently changed trainers from Pedro Diaz to Roach in an effort to try and shake things up with his career after having lost his last two fights.
If Cotto beats Delvin Rodriguez on October 5th, we very well could see Cotto back in the ring with Pacquiao in 2014 if the two fighters can agree on negotiations. Arum doesn’t have any good options for Pacquiao to fight in his Top Rank stable other than Juan Manuel Marquez, and he’s not interested in fighting him again.
Cotto is easily the best option for Pacquiao to fight in the future as far as bringing in big PPV numbers. Arum’s other fighters that will likely be in with Pacquiao in the future, besides Brandon Rios, are Mike Alvarado and Tim Bradley. Those aren’t big names, and Cotto is a much option for Pacquiao than those guys. Arum needs to make a strong play to get Cotto in the ring with Pacquiao after the Rios fight.
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