Purses for Saturday: Cotto $7 million, Martinez $1.5 million

By Boxing News - 06/06/2014 - Comments

martinez4444(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) may be merely the challenger for his fight this Saturday night against WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-1-1, 28 KO’s), but he’ll be getting a lot more than Maravilla with his purse for their HBO pay-per-view fight at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Cotto will be getting a guaranteed $7 million for the fight, whereas Martinez will get $1.5 million plus more money from the percentage of PPV upside, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.

“Cotto-Martinez purses: Cotto $3M (guaranteed $7M), Martinez $1.5M (but will get way more, on %). Vazquez Jr. 65k, Sonsona 30k, Melendez 85k, Maciel 10k, Lee 70k, Jackson 60k,” Rafael said on his twitter.

You would think that a fighter as good as Sergio Martinez would deserve a lot more than just a $1.5 million purse given that we see guys like Manny Pacquiuao making $20 million+.

The money really drops off dramatically once you get passed the main event fighters. Andy Lee and John Jackson are getting very little when you look at their purses. Once the taxes and training expenses are taken out, they’re not going to have much left.

Cotto has a chance to make a lot more money against former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez this year if Cotto can get passed Martinez. Cotto also has a good chance of getting rematches against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Even if Cotto gets knocked out by Martinez on Saturday night, he’ll still be able to get the Canelo fight, according to Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya. He still wants to make a fight between Cotto and Canelo no matter what happens on Saturday night in the Cotto-Martinez fight.

For Martinez, a win over Cotto puts him in position inn theory to get a fight against Canelo, although I tend to doubt that Canelo will accept a dangerous fight against Sergio unless he looks vulnerable. The worst thing that that Sergio can do is look too good in beating Cotto, because if he does that, he’ll likely scare away the likes of Canelo. Martinez can always get a unification fight against WBA champion Gennady Golovkin if he’s up for that fight. He probably won’t take that fight due to how dangerous Golovkin is.



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