Canelo’s trainer wants Cotto fight in late 2014

By Boxing News - 04/24/2014 - Comments

canelo76By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (43-1-1, 31 KO’s) hasn’t beaten his next scheduled opponent WBA light middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s) yet, and already Canelo’s trainer Jose “Chepo” Reynoso is looking past that fight for a much hoped for clash against Miguel Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) for later on this year.

Cotto has an important fight on June 7th against WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez at Madison Square Garden in New York, and there’s no telling how Cotto will do in that fight. He could very well come apart like he did in his losses to Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao.

“Miguel Cotto is definitely one of those big names that we want to face,” Reynoso said. “Or the winner of Cotto and Maravilla, but I think Cotto is the one who is more interesting. We offered Cotto $10 million during negotiations. Hopefully everything goes well and we can do business. For now our opponent is Lara and he’s the one we’re focused on.”

WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin is also a possibility for Canelo if everything goes right in terms of Canelo winning his fights against Lara and Cotto. Quillin could be a possible third fight in succession.

Those are two very hard fights for Canelo against Lara and Cotto. I don’t know how much left Canelo will have to take on someone as tough as Quillin. Canelo doesn’t have great defensive skills, and he’ll be taking a lot of head shots in his fights against Lara and Cotto. By the time Canelo gets to Quillin, he might not be able to stand up to his scorching punches. Quillin is a middleweight and not the usual welterweights that Canelo has been fighting for most of his career. Canelo might struggle in taking the big shots from Quillin after two very hard fights for him.

At this point Canelo will be lucky if he can even beat Lara. That’s a fight that spells trouble for Canelo. Even if he wins it, we could be seeing another controversial victory for the 23-year-old Canelo, and he’d be going from that fight straight into the winner of the Martinez-Cotto fight. You’d like to see Canelo beat Lara convincingly, but I have a feeling we could see a controversial win for Canelo where he gets dominated but still winds up as the winner.

It’s not surprising that Reynoso prefers the tiny 5’7” Cotto to that of 5’10” Sergio Martinez, because the two of them are very different fighters for a guy like Canelo. Cotto is smaller than Canelo, and totally immobile.

Canelo would have no problem finding Cotto in the ring, and it would be a simple matter of trying to beat him in a war. But with the bigger, faster and much more mobile Sergio Martinez, Canelo could find himself getting out-boxed the way he was by Floyd Mayweather Jr. last September. That’s a fight that Canelo could lose, and it would look bad because Sergio is almost 40-years-old now. Getting beaten by someone that old will definitely take some of the luster off of Canelo’s highly hyped career.



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