Dibella: Miguel Cotto vs. Andy Lee is tremendous fight!

By Boxing News - 08/05/2014 - Comments

cotto56678By Dan Ambrose: Promoter Lou Dibella is excited at the thought of his fighter #8 WBO Andy Lee (33-2, 23 KOs) potentially ending up as the next opponent for WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) next December.

Cotto reportedly doesn’t want to take a risky fight against someone that is good enough to potentially beat him and mess up his plans for a mega payday against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez next May on Cinco de Mayo. And that’s where 30-year-old Andy Lee comes in.

He’s someone that Cotto should be able to beat with a high degree of certainty, and he’s got a recognizable name to hardcore and some casual fans. Lee is remembered by casual boxing fans in the U.S as the guy that former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr took apart in stopping him in 7 rounds in June of 2012 at the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Mexico.

Lee has done little to redeem himself since the loss to Chaves Jr, but he did beat junior middleweight John Jackson by a 5th round knockout in a fight that Lee was losing last June on the undercard of the Cotto vs. Sergio Martinez fight at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Lee is someone that can potentially bring in a lot of Irish boxing fans are MSG, which is where Cotto plans on fighting. Cotto sells out the garden by himself, so he really doesn’t need Lee’s help in selling it out, but it obviously helps that Cotto will have a guy facing him who is able to sell tickets, at least in this part of the United States.

“Andy sells a lot of tickets,” DiBella said to Dan Rafael of ESPN. “I really believe you’ll have a similar crowd to what Cotto-Martinez drew, and Andy really wants the fight. I’m sure HBO would like Andy as an opponent, and I know the Garden loves the fight. Andy has wanted the opportunity to fight a legend. It’s a tremendous fight. Andy can crack.”

I wouldn’t call Cotto-Lee as tremendous fight. It’s basically a tremendous mismatch. Cotto is far better than Lee, and this fight probably won’t go past the 5th round at best. HBO will green light it, because the alternative to Lee as an opponent is probably far, far worse. If HBO doesn’t say yes to Lee, then we’re probably going to see Cotto face some obscure fringe contender.

The point is Cotto probably isn’t going to face anyone that you can call a really good fighter with a chance to beat him because he’s on cruise control right now heading for the Canelo fight. If HBO was to insist on Cotto fighting a guy like Golovkin, we’d likely see Cotto get destroyed in that fight, and then there would be no Cotto-Canelo for next year. It wouldn’t sell like it would now after Cotto’s victory over the past his prime Sergio Martinez last June.

Cotto needs to take advantage of the popularity that he’s gotten from his win over Sergio. Fans don’t realize that Cotto wasn’t facing the best middleweight in the division when he took that fight. Ring Magazine has Cotto now their Ring middleweight champion after beating Martinez instead of waiting until he faces Golovkin before giving him that title designation.



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