Roach wants Mayweather or Canelo for Cotto after Sergio Martinez fight

By Boxing News - 03/20/2014 - Comments

YouTube video
By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach is hoping to get a rematch for his fighter Miguel Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2015 if Cotto wins his June 7th catch-weight fight against WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-2-2, 28 KO’s) at Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York, USA.

Roach has had rotten luck in trying to get his fighter Manny Pacquiao a fight against Mayweather in the past through no fault of Mayweather, so this could be the one big chance that Roach will have for one of his fighters to face Mayweather.

The chances obviously aren’t good because Mayweather has no reason to jam his career in reverse to go backwards for to face a retread opponent like Cotto. Mayweather already beat Cotto two years ago, and there’s not much of an upside for Mayweather to beat him again.

The rematch would be totally one-sided because Mayweather would choose to box Cotto instead of slugging with him like he did last time they fought.

“If we win this fight the Mayweather rematch will be a possibility or Canelo Alvarez is a big fight also, and I love the Alvarez fight,” Roach said to Fighthub. “We turned it down to take this fight because we didn’t know how long Martinez would be there. We’re looking for a big win here, and then a big fight after this.”

Instead of worrying about what fights are other there for Cotto after the Martinez fight, Roach should be very, very worried about the fight in front of Cotto. I think Martinez is going to knock Cotto out and give him a worse beating than Antonio Margarito did in their fight in 2008. Cotto took a bad beating in that fight and ended up taking a couple of knees in losing by an 11th round TKO.

If Cotto can get past Martinez, and that’s a big if, then the best fight for Cotto would be against Canelo. This is a match-up that Golden Boy Promotions badly wants, and I don’t think Mayweather would want to jump in the way of a big fight for the 23-year-old Canelo. This would be a career-defining fight for the young Mexican star, and if he could beat Cotto, it would be a good scalp to add to his collection. The Alfredo Angulo win wasn’t a special one for Canelo because of how depleted and physically weakened Angulo looked in that fight. But a victory over Cotto would be a huge win for Canelo, and it would increase his popularity tenfold.

Roach feels pretty certain that Cotto will beat Martinez, though, and he’s predicting an 8th round TKO win. “Yeah, we’ll knock him out in 8th,” Roach said. “He’s [Sergio] a great athlete, but he’s not a great fighter. I’ll come up with a good plan, and we’ll be ready for whatever Martinez brings to the table. I think I have a pretty good game plan in how to beat his system and beat his speed. We’re going to be 100 percent ready for this fight.”

Roach is pretty cocky as usual, and I have to give Martinez a great chance of winning the fight just based on that.



Comments are closed.