Arum says Cotto could fight Canelo or Golovkin in the future

By Boxing News - 06/08/2014 - Comments

cotto123(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum would like to match newly crowned WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KO’s) up with former WBA/WBC 154-pound champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and WBA 160-lb champion Gennady Golovkin in the future. Arum isn’t sure whether a fight between Cotto and Canelo can happen next, but he sees the fight as a distinct possibility in 2015 if both guys keep winning.

Canelo has a risky fight against Erislandy Lara on July 12th, and he would probably need to win that one in order to make a Cotto-Canelo fight a viable option.

“Canelo is a possibility if he gets past Lara,” Arum told Dan Rafael of ESPN. “Next? I don’t know. But after that, next year is certainly a possibility.”

That would be a very tough fight for Cotto because Canelo is young at 23, and he’s not afflicted in any way with injuries to his knees the way that Sergio Martinez was last night. It’s a fight were the glitter could be knocked off of Cotto immediately with Canelo giving him a beating. At the same time, Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach, who is basking in the limelight off of Cotto’s win over the 39-year-old Sergio, he could see himself knocked down a peg if Canelo were to obliterate Cotto and do what Antonio Margarito did to him.

Boxing fans would see Roach and Cotto as two people who merely took advantage of the aging Sergio Martinez with good match-making by choosing to fight him at that point in his career rather than when he was in his prime from 2008 to 2012. There’s no question that the Martinez that Cotto beat last night was a shell of his former self due to the effects of age and knee injuries. If a younger fighter were to wait until Cotto was 39 to fight him, it’s quite likely we wouldn’t see Cotto in his golden moment of his career. Being close to 40-years-old with two bad knees has a way of bringing you down to earth.

As for a Cotto-Golovkin fight, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen, because the odds of Arum and Roach steering Cotto into a fight against Golovkin are so slim that it’s almost laughable. It’s one thing for Cotto to fight a 39-year-old Martinez with him coming off of over a year layoff from boxing with two major knee surgeries, and it’s a whole different thing in fighting a prime Golovkin, who is in perfect health. I don’t see Arum and Roach making that fight unless Golovkin suddenly starts looking like a shot fighter the way that Sergio was after his last fight against Martin Murray.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Floyd Mayweather Jr. agrees to a rematch with Cotto, because it would give Mayweather a chance to win a world title at 160, and I think he’ll take that fight due to the money being good. Mayweather knows how to take neutralize Cotto’s left hook, especially if that’s his entire focus like it was last night. Mayweather would clown Cotto and make him look one dimensional if he comes out throwing nothing but left hooks. It would be too easy.



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