Cotto’s plan-B option is Tim Bradley for June 13th on PPV

By Boxing News - 02/10/2015 - Comments

bradley14By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) is poised to face former two division world champion Tim Bradley (31-1-1, 12 KOs) on June 13th in New York, according to Fighthype.com.

The Cotto-Bradley fight will take place ONLY if Floyd Mayweather Jr is able to negotiate his May 2nd fight with Manny Pacquiao. If that fight doesn’t take place, then the 34-year-old Cotto will likely be meeting up with Mayweather on May 2nd in a rematch.

It’s hard to see Cotto vs. Bradley as a pay-per-view worthy fight on HBO Championship Boxing. Bradley is coming off of a 12 round draw in his last fight against Diego Chaves last December in Las Vegas, Nevada. Even if you want to say that Bradley got a raw deal in that fight, you still can’t deny that he looked poor and he was punched around the ring by the 5’7” Chaves, especially in the second half of the fight.

If Chaves was able to do that to Bradley, then what do you think Cotto will do to him? Like I said, I don’t see the Cotto-Bradley fight being a pay-per-view worthy bout at all. Bradley has unfinished business with Chaves and Ruslan Provodnikov, and he shouldn’t be getting a world title fight at this point.

Bradley was beaten by Manny Pacquiao last April. In Bradley’s last two fights, he has a record of 0-1-1. To me, that’s not the kind of resume that you want to see from a world title challenger, even if you’re talking about a fighter being hand-picked for an optional title defense.

YouTube video

The Cotto-Bradley fight would obviously be a very controversial one due to Cotto choosing to face a small welterweight instead of a middleweight to defend his WBC 160 pound title against.

Cotto made a big deal about wanting to move up to the middleweight division in order to capture a fourth division world champion last year in June against the gimpy-legged Sergio Martinez. However, instead of facing the best fighter or even the second best fighter in the division, Cotto fought Martinez, who was up there in age at 39 and coming off of two knee surgeries on his right knee, as well as a year layoff from the boxing ring.

By choosing not to face a middleweight in his first and likely his only title defense of his WBC middleweight title, it’s going to come across like Cotto merely picked up a paper title in beating Martinez with no real interest in defending it against all comers. The fight that boxing fans want to see is Cotto vs. WBC interim middleweight title holder Gennady Golovkin. That bout has almost no chance of taking place unfortunately.

Cotto is expected by some boxing fans to vacate his WBC 160 pound title after his title defense in June rather than hold onto the title and be faced with the situation of having to defend it in his next fight against Golovkin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsfEpOGfY-U

Cotto can take the optional title defense in his next fight, but after that he has to defend it against the winner of the February 21st fight between Golovkin and Martin Murray. Golovkin is expected to win that fight easily to put himself in position to either face Cotto or fight for the vacant WBC middleweight title after Cotto vacates it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdIFRvpWNJk



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