Arum prefers Cotto to fight Canelo, and not Golovkin

By Boxing News - 07/30/2014 - Comments

canelo788By Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says the ultimate decision on who WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) wants to fight in his next couple of bouts is going to be made by him.

Arum isn’t bashful in saying that he wants Cotto to fight Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez next year rather than WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. Arum sees the Canelo-Cotto fight as being the better match for Cotto than a Cotto-Golovkin fight. To Arum, it comes to the most reward that his fighter Cotto can get based on the risk.

Cotto has already been exposed by Antonio Margarito, Floyd Mayweather Jr and Austin Trout. Arum wants to make sure that he puts Canelo into a situation where he’s going to get a ton of money whether he wins or loses the fight.

Arum wants to steer Cotto to the bigger money fight and minimize the risk as much as possible. The downside of this is we’re not going to see either of these guys matched against the best fighter in the middleweight division. We’re getting a couple of guys that are below Golovkin ready to face each other.

“Certainly, it’s up to Miguel who he wants to fight but I think the Canelo [Alvarez] fight is a much more attractive fight,” Arum said to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “Even though I love Golovkin and [K2 Promotions managing director] Tom Loeffler — and nobody can say that Golovkin isn’t a great fighter — it’s risk-reward in boxing. We don’t know about Golovkin’s ability on pay-per-view.”

The decision on who he wants to fight might be up to Cotto, but you can bet that Aum is goig to give a strong plug for Cotto to fight Canelo instead of Golovkin. Arum wants that fight badly, and it’s one that Cotto has a better chance of winning compared to against Golovkin, who could put Cotto into a permanent retirement if he gave him a bad enough beating.

This is obviously bad news for boxing fans who were hoping to see Golovkin vs. Cotto in a unification match. The fight makes all the sense in the world because both guys are middleweights. Canelo is a junior middleweight who has been struggling lately in his fights against Erislandy Lara and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Arum’s idea is obviously the smart business move. If you’ve got a guy more popular but arguably less talented like Cotto, you’re going to want to put him in fights he can win instead of ones he’s likely to lose badly. Arum’s job is to match Cotto against guys that make him the most money and where he has a decent chance of winning. Canelo is a badly flawed fighter that Cotto, even at this stage in his career, might be able to beat him.



Comments are closed.