By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Robert Garcia thinks that WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KO’s) avoid fighting WBA 160-pound champion Gennady Golovkin (29-0, 26 KO’s) because he sees Golovkin as far too dangerous for the 5’7” Cotto to fight. Golovkin isn’t old and coming off of major knee surgeries, and he feels that he would be too much for Cotto to do with.
Instead of Cotto fighting Golovkin and likely getting knocked out in 2-3 rounds, Garcia thinks Cotto would be better off fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr in a rematch or facing Saul “Canelo” Alvarez if the fight can be put together.
“I think triple G is just too dangerous [for Cotto],” said Garcia. “He [Cotto] could fight Mayweather again. That’s a fight that people would buy. Cotto vs. Mayweather again. Cotto vs. Canelo. It would be huge – Puerto Rico vs. Mexico.”
Garcia is conflicted about the idea of Cotto fighting Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. He thinks it would be a good fight, but he feels that Chavez Jr would be too big for Cotto. The weight that Garcia mentioned the fight taking place at, 160, would be impossible for Chavez Jr to make without him coming in badly weight drained. Besides that, it might prove impossible to put that fight together if Top Rank makes it conditional that Chavez Jr needs to sign an extension with them. If that’s the case then he won’t agree to the fight, even if it were possible to negotiate it.
I don’t think it’s a fight that could be made because Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach would likely insist that Chavez Jr come down all the way to 160 for the fight to happen in order to make sure that Cotto isn’t put at a disadvantage in the fight. But in doing so, Chavez Jr would be the one that would hurt.
Cotto should be open to fighting Golovkin if only to show that he’s not a paper champion, because he picked up the title against the 39-year-old Sergio Martinez, who was coming off of a 14 month layoff and two major knee surgeries in the past year. It was like when Cotto fought Antonio Margarito the second time. Margarito was coming off of a 12 month layoff and 3 eye surgeries on his right eye. Margarito didn’t take a tune-up fight, just like Sergio Martinez didn’t take a tune-up.
The result was Cotto looking brilliant against Margarito in beating him by a 9th round stoppage. But when Cotto had to step it up after those fights, he was beaten by Austin Trout and Mayweather. The difference was those guys weren’t coming off of three separate eye surgeries and a yearlong layoff.
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