Freddie Roach, Cotto, Pacquiao and Mayweather

By Boxing News - 09/13/2014 - Comments

roach4523By Nathan Haworth: A lot of people have been discussing Miguel Cotto recently, this is obviously due to the one sided bout with previous Champ Sergio Martinez.

Cotto demolished Sergio in this Championship fight at The Madison Square Garden for The Ring and WBC Middleweight title. Martinez was a shadow of his former self due to recent knee surgery; people weren’t too sure how he’d recover from this and the result in the fight ultimately showed he in fact didn’t recover as well as we’d hope.

Martinez was retired within 10 rounds by his corner, not to mention being put down three times inside the opening round and apparently people still don’t see Miguel Cotto as a true middleweight (me included).

This now sparks the question by nearly all fight fans is Miguel Cotto (former Light Welterweight and Welterweight World Champion) ready for a fight against a true Middleweight Champion in Gennady Golovkin (WBA (Super) & IBO Middleweight Titles).

Well here’s what Freddie Roach has to say on the matter; “We would entertain that fight but to fight Golovkin right now on a pay-per-view fight it just doesn’t have a very big audience yet, he’s not that well known yet. He’s a great fighter yes but the thing is why would we fight someone that tough for no money. Alvarez is the fight we want rite now because he’s the biggest market out there and I feel this is the best fight for my fighter. After this then if Golovkin is a little more popular then yes this is a fight we’d take for sure”.

From the above to me it sounds like Miguel Cotto is not a true Middleweight, yes a Middleweight World Champion who beat a shot 39-year-old fighter but not someone who could jump in the ring and hold their own with a fighter like Golovkin (30(27) – 0 – 0). Golovkin is relentless and closes the ring down too well for Cotto to have any chance of staying in the ring for the duration. It sounds like Freddie wants to make as much money as he can before he calls it a day; why take the hard fights when the easier ones bring in more cash, that seems to be what boxing is about these days.

My prediction is that Miguel Cotto will fight Canelo Alvarez, he’ll win this fight and then he’ll stay around the Welterweight and Light Middleweight division, this seems to be where the most money is for him. I say this because I can’t see Cotto fighting guys like Gennady Golovkin or Martin Murray these are the type of people that are too big/strong and would destroy him in a 12 round fight.

At the moment Freddie is training Manny Pacquiao in the Philippines and he will be doing so until his fight with Chris Algieri in Macao; which means a fight for Miguel Cotto is off the cards until what it looks like a fight with Saul Alvarez in May next year, this is because Miguel wants Freddie in his training camp for the full 8 weeks, this is the main reason the Timothy Bradley fight couldn’t be pulled off.

In a recent interview Freddie Roach talks about why he believes a fight between the top two in the division won’t happen; “I think Floyd is a little shot right now and I think his legs are gone, and I’d say that’s why he wont fight Pacquiao, that’s because that’s my opinion. He says its because he wants to please the audience and he doesn’t move so much anymore, I say bulls**t your legs are gone”.

In my opinion if a fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao does happen for me it’s 5/6 years too late. It reminds me of when Lennox Lewis fought Mike Tyson, yes it happened and ultimately Tyson got knocked out but it was again 5/6 years too late and lost it’s magic, for me this is the exact same for the Mayweather Pacquiao fight; all the potential was there 5/6 years ago but now yeah people want to see it just for the sake of it. If Mayweather won the fight people would be like “oh well Pacquiao already lost 5 fights before the Mayweather one, another one doesn’t really matter”.

Freddie Roach seems to have a lot to say on the Mayweather Vs. Maidana, this is what he thinks about the rematch “The first fight put me to sleep and the second one will do the same. I mean seriously he learned how to fight him after 4 rounds and it’ll be easier to box him the same way, and what warrants a rematch in that fight I have no idea. It wasn’t a controversial fight there was a clear-cut winner. When do you have rematches in that type of situation?” Freddie goes onto weather the ship has sailed for the Mayweather Vs. Pacquiao mega fight “yeah I think its already gone, yeah I really do” he does go onto talk about the possible Mayweather Vs. Cotto rematch “Cotto Mayweather rematch, I haven’t talked to Miguel about that yet but Miguel did tell me after his last fight; Freddie if I was in this kind of shape for the Mayweather fight as I was in our last fight together I would have knocked him out. So that’s something that’s on his mind I’m sure”.

With two fighters like Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquiao, Freddie Roach really does believe he has a game plan to beat Mayweather; he believes with these two fighters he has two better guys with more talent than Floyd has. Freddie furthers the interview by stating Mayweather has been well protected (not true) and picks and choses who he wants to fight. He has a great deal with ShowTime where he can do that and the promoter shouldn’t be letting that happen.

For me with Manny Pacquiao we’ve seen in his last few fights; Timothy Bradley (Lost), Juan Manuel Márquez (Lost KO), Brandon Rios (Won UD) a fight that sent most people to sleep I’m sure, Timothy Bradley rematch (Won UD). He didn’t look particularly good in any of these fights and didn’t cause any threat to any of the opponent’s. If we compare this with Floyds last four fights; Miguel Cotto (Won UD) controlled the fight from start to finish, got caught with a few shots but looked decent, Robert Guerrero (Won UD) controlled the fight, made Guerrero look like an amateur, Saul Alvarez (Won MD) C.J Ross had this one as a draw with the rest in favour of Floyd Mayweather; Floyd controlled this fight and showed everyone that Canelo was not ready for a fight of this magnitude, Marcos Maidana (Won MD) for me, like most maybe had Maidana winning the first 3 rounds the rest went to Floyd, no need for a rematch Maidana didn’t even come close to winning.

This for me just shows that Mayweather is and has been leagues above Manny all his career and as for Cotto he lost once and really doesn’t deserve a rematch; maybe if he beats Canelo (which he will) then we could see the rematch.

As for the Pacquiao fight, it’s a little too late and really wouldn’t bother me if I never see this one; if it did happen I would still tune in.

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