By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank says that he’ll look to negotiate with Golden Boy Promotions for a fight between Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez if Canelo is still under contract with Golden Boy and if that’s the fight that Cotto wants next or in the near future.
Arum isn’t sure of Canelo’s status as far as his promoter goes, but he’s open to negotiations for a fight with him and Cotto if that’s the direction Cotto wants to take. Right now they’re talking about a Cotto vs. Sergio Martinez fight next June for Martinez’s WBC middleweight title, but that fight is still in the talking stage and no definite.
Arum said to Hustleboss “We’re not going to negotiate anything with Canelo until we see if he has a contract or doesn’t have a contract. If he has a contract with Golden Boy and we want to make that fight, we obviously are going to have to negotiate with Golden Boy.”
Arum wants Cotto to fight Sergio Martinez for some reason. Obviously that’s a much easier fight for him to put together than a Cotto vs. Canelo fight, but given the likelihood that Cotto will lose to Sergio if that fight gets made, Arum – or one of Cotto’s team – should step in and say no to the fight against Sergio. It’s a bad fight for Cotto, and it’s not going to bring the kind of money that he’d get if he could fight Canelo.
The fight will close doors for Cotto to a Canelo bout because a loss to Sergio will pretty much finish any chances that Cotto has to get a fight against the red-haired Mexican fighter.
Look at it this way: Cotto is getting old, he’s been through some terrible wars, and he’s probably only got a small handful of fights left in him. For that reason it’s better for him to go after the biggest fight that he can get against Canelo than it would be for him to move up to the middleweight division to fight Sergio and less money in losing to him.
The reality is that Cotto will probably lose to both Canelo and Sergio Martinez, but the Canelo fight is an actual pay-per-view worthy fight; whereas the Cotto vs. Martinez fight would be more of a regular HBO type of bout.
Arum thinks that Cotto has gone back to being the fighter that he was before with the help of trainer Freddie Roach. Arum says that Cotto’s fighting style is a “throwback” to what he was years ago. I don’t know if that’s true or not.
You can say if Cotto had beaten a good fighter with that style like Austin Trout, but I don’t consider Delvin Rodriguez as a good fighter. I rate him more of a ‘C’ level fighter than an ‘A’ level guy, and that’s why it’s impossible to say whether Cotto has improved with Roach or if it’s just a case of a weak opponent having been picked out for Cotto to look good against.
Comments are closed.