Rubio wants Cotto to fight him or vacate his title

By Allan Fox: After beating Domenico Spada last April to win the interim WBC middleweight title, Marco Antonio Rubio (59-6-1, 51 KOs) now wants a title shot against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs), but it’s not looking too good for Rubio that he’s going to be getting one.

Cotto is looking for big money fights, and his WBC 160 pound title is now more of a status thing for him than something he plans on defending or using in a unificaition fight. Rubio wants Cotto to either give him a fight or give up the title so that he can fight for it.

Cotto could face light middleweight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a fight in the near future.
“If Miguel Cotto doesn’t want to fight with me, it’s best to just step aside,” Rubio said via Fightnews.com. “Cotto should step aside and continue as a junior middleweight. He’s too small to be in the middleweight division.”

Cotto has the size to beat most of the top middleweights, including Rubio. The only guys that would give Cotto trouble are Gennady Golovkin, Peter Quillin. Sam Soliman, Curtis Stevens, Martin Murray, and Matt Korobov. Those are the best of the bunch right now. Daniel Jacobs is kind of an unknown because he’s not faced anyone good in quite some time.

Cotto is probably going to sit on the WBC title without fighting Rubio. That’s a fight that will likely never happen, and you can’t expect the WBC to force Cotto to take the fight because he’ll likely vacate rather than fight a guy that don’t make for a marketable fight.
Rubio is going to need to sit and wait Cotto out until he gets beaten or vacates the title.

Once Cotto is no longer the WBC title, Rubio will very likely get his chance at winning the title then. Of course, if Canelo wins the WBC title, then Rubio may end up being in the same boat with Canelo not fighting him and the WBC not lifting a finger to try and force him to fight Rubio. It’s about entertainment, and which fighter has the biggest following.

Rubio isn’t going to be able to force anything without the WBC taking a risk on his behalf. They won’t likely do that because of Cotto’s popularity and the sanctioning fees he’ll be paying each time he defends the WBC title, if he ever does.