Roach: The Mayweather fight will always be there for Cotto

By Boxing News - 01/07/2015 - Comments

roach013By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Freddie Roach prefers having his fighter WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto face Saul “Canelo” Alvarez right now rather than having him step inside the ring to face Floyd Mayweather Jr for a second time.

It’s not that Roach doesn’t want Cotto to face Mayweather again, because he definitely does. He just doesn’t want him to fight him right now. Roach feels that Cotto can beat Mayweather now that he’s training him and giving him his training advice.

“Even if Mayweather came along, this fight is better for us at this time, because Mayweather will always be there,” Roach said via thesweetscience.com. “He’s [Canelo] a good puncher but he’s still young and makes a lot of mistakes. Things I think we’d take advantage of.”

If Roach is that confident that Cotto can beat Canelo right now then he’s got to have seen something in Canelo’s game that makes him think that he’s ripe for the picking for Cotto. Roach felt this same way about Cotto facing Sergio Martinez last year, and Roach turned out to be right about it.

Whether Roach wants the Canelo vs. Cotto fight or not, it still may not happen if Canelo isn’t willing to accept the purse split that Cotto is looking for.

Roach isn’t in charge of the negotiations for Cotto, and it’s quite possible that Cotto might be willing to face Mayweather next in May rather than Canelo if he can’t get the red-haired fighter to agree to the purse split that he wants in order to face him.

Cotto is a tough bargainer and if he doesn’t get the money that he’s looking for in order to take the fight then he’s not likely to give into the 24-year-old fighter.

Roach suspects that even if Cotto and Canelo are able to successfully negotiate the fight together for May 2nd, Mayweather will then make a deal with Manny Pacquiao and move in to take the May 2nd date from them.

“If they take May 2nd, our good friend Floyd Mayweather likes to take things away from people and show how powerful he is,” Roach said.

Mayweather is already in the process of trying to line up the Pacquiao fight for May 2nd, so it’s not going to be any surprise if Canelo and Cotto are booted off the May 2nd date by Mayweather. I don’t believe that’s the whole reason for Mayweather wanting to fight Pacquiao now.

I think it’s more of a case of him not having any real good options other than Pacquiao. If not him, then Mayweather would be looking to fight Amir Khan, Danny Garcia or Keith Thurman. None of those are big fights, and all of them could be difficult.