By Dan Ambrose: The negotiations between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) and challenger Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) has reached a sticking point for various reasons for their planned May 2nd fight on HBO pay-per-view.
It seems that one of the reasons the fight negotiations has reached a stall is due to the money split. Cotto’s team obviously want the bigger cut of the financial pie, and it appears that they’re getting that judging by the comments of Cotto’s adviser Gaby Penagaricano.
The purse split might not be enough in their favor to justify the fight taking place given that Cotto is the A-side and Canelo the B-side in the negotiations.
“The question is, ‘How much of the lion’s share?” That one guy should get. So that’s it,” Penagaricano said via RingTV.com.
If Cotto is going to be getting the larger cut of the financial pie then how much more should he be getting. With his experience, world titles, and popularity, you can make an argument that Cotto deserves the larger purse split. Just how much larger obviously is what is causing the stall in the negotiations. Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions may have started the negotiations thinking that they could get a 50-50 split of the money. That likely didn’t go too well with Cotto’s management.
De La Hoya recently said they moved off the 50-50 number. Just how far they moved off it in Cotto’s favor is unclear. If it was only 55-45, then that could be the problem with the negotiations because it’ll likely take a bigger number than that to get the Cotto-Canelo fight may.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a number closer to 65-35 or 70-30 for the fight to get made. I don’t know if Canelo would ever agree to a purse split of that kind for a Cotto fight, even if means he won’t get the fight. I can see Canelo holding firm on a 55-45 split, which I doubt Cotto would ever accept.
“@caneloOficial has conceded on all demands, including moving from 50/50,” De La Hoya said on his Twitter.
It looks like De La Hoya didn’t move off the 50-50 number enough for the fight to be doable. Canelo, 24, is still kind of a young fighter, and it’s hard to see a veteran like the 34-year-old Cotto willing to accept a deal that is close to 50-50 deal with someone that much younger than him.
If Cotto was just an older fighter who hadn’t done much with his career and had no fan base, then it would be easy to see Canelo getting his way in the negotiations, but that’s not the case.
Cotto has had a good career, and won a lot of world titles. The two fighters appear to be equal in terms of pay-per-view buys though, since they both have brought in a little over 300,000 buys when they were the A-side on PPV cards. That might be one of the reasons why Canelo and De La Hoya started off the negotiations looking to get a 50-50 deal.
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