By Dan Ambrose: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez says they’re willing to do anything they can to get a fight against WBC middleweight belt holder Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs), including being the C-side in order to get the fight signed.
Golovkin wants the WBC strap so bad that it looks like he’s willing to take the short money in order to lure the aging 34-year-old Cotto in the ring. However, Golovkin doesn’t have a bad knee and he’s not bearing 40 the way Cotto’s last opponent Sergio Martinez was.
In other words, it could prove difficult for him to get a fight against the Puerto Rican star because he’s more or less in his prime and his name isn’t Delvin Rodriguez or Sergio Martinez. Cotto has looked good recently against weak and older competition, and Golovkin might be too much in his prime to get a fight against him under those circumstances.
“As the coach of the fighter, I would like to see Cotto, because he’s the WBC champion,” Sanchez said via Fighthype. If Cotto is willing, Tom can put that fight together. We’re willing to be the C end of it. Not the A or B end of it, the C end of it just to get the title. He [Golovkin] wants to fight find out who’s who at 160 pounds and that he is the WBC champion, and not the interim champion. Having the WBC belt is very important to Gennady.”
I’m not so sure that Cotto will be agreeable to get inside the ring with a fierce puncher like Golovkin. Cotto seems to be in the milking stage of his career right now. He’s either taking fights against aging fighters that were once good or he’s looking to get big money against fighters like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.
I don’t believe Cotto is going to hold onto his WBC title if he gets past Canelo, if the fight can get made. Either way, I see Cotto moving in the direction of a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr or possibly Manny Pacquiao after the Canelo fight. Either of those guys will likely agree to fight Cotto even if he gets knocked out by Canelo. The money that Cotto can make from those fighters is obviously more than what he’d make against Golovkin. Besides that, they’re smaller than Golovkin and don’t hit as hard.
Cotto is in a situation where he picked up the WBC middleweight title the easy way without him having to really take a real challenge. He was able to beat an old fighter in Sergio Martinez who hadn’t fought in over a year and a half, and who was coming off of two knee operations. Besides that, Martinez was nearly 40-years-old. It was the best possible situation for Cotto. He’s the WBC champion right now, but you can make an argument that he’s really little more than an untested belt holder.
Cotto didn’t beat the top guy at middleweight, and he’s holding a belt that he might not have enough talent to hold onto, even against someone like Peter Quillin or Jermain Taylor. There are a lot of question marks about Cotto’s ability to hold down a title at 160, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s not willing to answer those questions by facing Golovkin.
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