Rafael doubts Roach will give Cotto the green light to fight Golovkin

By Boxing News - 07/28/2014 - Comments

roach6777By Chris Williams: Dan Rafael of ESPN believes that WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach, who was at the fight last Saturday night to scout out WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin as a potential opponent for Cotto, will go back to Cotto and tell him that it’s a great idea for him to fight Golovkin next in December.

Indeed, Rafael sees Roach choosing not to give Cotto the go ahead to take the fight with Golovkin due to the danger involved for him. It’s one thing Cotto beating up on a nearly 40-year-old man coming off of a 14 month layoff and 2 knee surgeries in Sergio Martinez, and it’s quite a different thing for Cotto to fight a live opponent in his prime in Golovkin.

Roach bragged something fierce about Cotto’s win over Sergio last June, making it out like he’d done something special. Boxing fans poured praise over Roach’s head like they were showering a king. All that praise that Roach got could evaporate in a second if he says yes to Cotto fighting Golovkin, and then he gets beaten to a pulp by the Kazakhstan fighter.

All the fans that dumped praise on Roach from before would suddenly see things from a different light. Some of the fans would realize that Cotto’s win over Martinez was an empty one due to how old and over-the-hill he was.

Rafael said on ESPN “That’s a fight that should happen. Will it happen? I’m very skeptical. Freddie Roach, Miguel’s trainer, was in the house on Saturday night. He said he’d never seen Golovkin fight and he wanted to see him. I have to believe he’s not the first guy that’s going to run to the Cotto people and endorse that fight. It’s a fight that should happen but I don’t think it’s a fight that will happen.”

The last thing that Roach needs is to the guy that told Cotto is was a good idea for him to fight Golovkin. If Cotto takes the fight because of Roach telling him to, he would then have a fall guy if things don’t’ work out for him. If Cotto gets blasted out in 2 rounds by Golovkin, Roach might have a hard time explaining himself to Cotto for having hand-picked Golovkin.

Roach did a good job of selecting Sergio for Cotto. He said it himself that he saw how deteriorated Sergio looked in his previous fight against Martin Murray. Roach then told Cotto to fight Sergio instead of fighting Golovkin, a fighter who wasn’t looking old and deteriorated, for his title.



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