By Dan Ambrose: It looks like Bob Arum of Top Rank, Lou Dibella and Sampson Lewkowicz may be talking about a fight that boxing fans aren’t all that interested in seeing with the Miguel Cotto vs. Sergio Martinez idea. According to a poll at RingTV, boxing fans much prefer to see Cotto fight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez than Sergio Martinez. 48.8 percent of the fans polled picked Cotto-Canelo as the fight they want to see, whereas only 30.1 percent want to see Cotto fight the aging 39-year-old Martinez.
Cotto’s adviser Gaby Penagaricano also seems intrigued at the idea of Cotto and Canelo mixing it up, saying to RingTV “We need to know what makes the most sense for Miguel. I think that [a fight] with Canelo] would be a very big fight.”
Gaby is right. There’s no question about it that a Cotto vs. Canelo fight is the much better fight Cotto vs. Sergio Martinez. It’s also a more winnable fight for Cotto because Canelo will be there right in front of him for the most part trying to mix it up for 12 rounds. The 5’9″ Canelo isn’t quite as tall as the 5’10” Martinez, and he doesn’t move around the ring the way that Martinez does.
There’s a lot less risk involved for Cotto in getting out-boxed by Canelo as there is against Sergio. The only thing Cotto has to worry about with Canelo is that he doesn’t get battered and knocked out. With Martinez, if his legs are working good, he’ll probably make Cotto look silly by moving around the ring for 12 rounds pot-shotting him at will. If you thought Cotto looked bad against Austin Trout, just imagine how he’ll look against an even more slippery fighter in Sergio.
In terms of money and fan interest, Canelo vs. Cotto is clearly the much better fight than Cotto vs. Martinez. There’s not a huge Argentinian population in the U.S to pool from to attract fans to a Cotto-Martinez fight, because Martinez is originally from Argentina and now lives in Spain. He’s popular in the U.S, but not at the level of Canelo and he doesn’t have a huge Mexican fan base to back him the way that Canelo does. You’d hate to see Cotto fight Martinez and end up getting beaten for less money than he’ll get against Sergio Martinez.
A fight between Cotto and Canelo is the more exciting fight because Canelo won’t be running from Cotto the way that Sergio will. We just saw Sergio run circles around the ring for 12 rounds last year in beating Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in September of 2012. When Martinez finally did stop running in the 12th round, he got knocked down and was hurt pretty badly in the last seconds of the fight.
If the 32-year-old Cotto was a younger fighter, I think it would be okay for him to fight Sergio Martinez, because he would still be young enough to rebuild himself for other big fights. But he’s up there in age and nearing the end of his career. That’s why he needs to take the biggest fight possible for him next against Canelo rather than a lesser fight against Martinez.
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