De La Hoya: Canelo can still fight Cotto even if he loses to Sergio Martinez

By Boxing News - 05/09/2014 - Comments

cotto67666By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya wants to match former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez against Miguel Cotto this year even if Cotto loses his June 7th fight against WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez at Madison Square Garden in New York. De La Hoya thinks that Cotto won’t lose any anything from a defeat to Sergio because he’s moving up in weight from 154 to 160, and fans aren’t going to hold it against him if he gets beaten.

“Canelo is in such a great position…Let’s say Cotto loses [to Sergio Martinez], he was fighting at 160, he doesn’t belong there,” De Loya said. “He [Cotto] can come back down to 154 and fight Canelo.”

I’m not a big fan of having fighters coming off of crushing defeats taking on big names in their very next fights. De La Hoya can do anything he wants, but I believe a Canelo-Cotto fight won’t be a huge fight if Cotto knocked out or beaten by Sergio Martinez in any way. To make a Canelo-Cotto fight big, Cotto would need to redeem himself at 154 by beating someone good before facing Canelo. That’s the way to do it if you want to make the most of a Canelo vs. Cotto fight. But if you follow what De La Hoya’s suggesting, then the Canelo-Cotto fight will be far from appealing because it’ll just look like Canelo is fighting another washed up fighter. As it is, Cotto has lost 2 out of his last 3 fights since 2012.

If Cotto loses to Sergio Martinez then that’s 3 defeats out of his last 4 fights for Cotto. We’re talking about a fighter heading towards journeyman status, and De La Hoya thinks it’s a good idea to put Cotto in with Canelo? It wouldn’t be fair to Cotto to do that, and I don’t see any upside for Canelo to fight a guy with three defeats in his last four fights. Could Canelo get excited about fighting someone with a record like that?

None of this will matter anyway if Canelo loses his next fight against Erislandy Lara on July 12th. If Canelo loses to Lara, and Cotto gets beaten by Martinez, De La Hoya can certainly match up Canelo and Cotto in what would be a losers bracket. I’m not sure that it would be seen as a big deal by fans because Canelo would have lost 2 out of his last 3 fights, and Cotto 3 out of his last 4. That fight would look like a cash out fight for both of them.

A Cotto-Canelo fight would look really bad if these two fighters are coming off of loses. The casual boxing fans who don’t have a clue about the sport might be interested in the fight, but hardcore boxing fans would see the timing of the fight as being terrible.



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