By Dan Ambrose: With his 10th round stoppage win over WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-3-2, 28 KO’s) last Saturday night, Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KO’s) was made the new Ring 160-pound champion by Ring Magazine instead of unbeaten WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (29-0, 26 KO’s), who is widely recognized as the real champion at middleweight by many hardcore boxing fans.
Golovkin is ranked No.1 by Ring below Cotto. In other words, Golovkin is like a contender with the Ring 160lb belt while Cotto is the Ring 160lb champion. This is kind of controversial because very, very few boxing fans see Cotto as being the No.1 overall fighter in the middleweight division, and by Ring having him as their champion, it kind of makes them look like they’re not up date with what’s going on in boxing.
If this ranking was done on the basis of popularity rather than who the best fighter in the middleweight division, then it’s quite understandable that Cotto should be the Ring Champ at 160. But that’s not what rating is all about who the best fighter is in the middleweight division, and it’s very controversial to have Cotto over Golovkin.
Sergio Martinez was considered to be the best fighter in the middleweight division for a period of time from 2010 to 2012 in the minds of a lot of boxing fans, but that changed with the emergence of Golovkin from 2012 to 2014. Now boxing fans see Golovkin as the best at 160, with a wide gap between him and the rest of the middleweights in the division.
Cotto’s win over an aging 39-year-old Martinez, who was coming off of 2 knee surgeries, shouldn’t make him the best fighter in the middleweight division because Martinez clearly had lost his place – or he should have lost it – to Golovkin in the past 2 years. Cotto should be below Golovkin at this point because he’s not being the top guy in the division, Golovkin.
Here are the Ring Ratings for middleweight:
Ring 160-pound Champion: Miguel Cotto
1. Gennady Golovkin
2. Daniel Geale
3. Peter Quillin
4. Martinez
5. Sam Soliman
6. Felix Sturm
7. Matthew Macklin
8. Marco Antonio Rubio
9. Martin Murray
10. Hassan Ndam Njikam
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