Miguel Cotto could announce his opponent by next week

By Boxing News - 02/05/2015 - Comments

cotto67777433333By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) could be ready to announce his next fight by as early as this Monday, according to ESPN Deportes. There are several names that Cotto’s adviser Gaby Penagaricano has been talking with, but they obviously have gone guy in mind that he’s not ready to mention at this time.

There are rumors that Cotto could be facing Floyd Mayweather Jr next as the plan-B option for the superstar fighter. It makes sense that the fight would be announced next week, because Cotto plans on fighting in May or June. He needs to announce the fight so that he – and Top Rank – can start promoting it.

“We are working with potential opponents and we want to reserve their names because we are in negotiations,” Penagaricano said via espndeportes.espn.go.com. “I think next week we will be ready to make the announcement. We’ll most likely fight in May or June.”

If it’s not Mayweather then you can expect someone along the lines of Timothy Bradley or Brandon Rios. Bradley would seem like the most likely fighter that will get the bout, because he’s the guy that has repeatedly been named by Top Rank promoter Bob Arum as the fighter he wants to match against Cotto.

Bradley and Cotto would need to face each other at a catch-weight slightly above 154. Cotto reportedly is weighing around 160, so he doesn’t need to lose a lot of weight in order to get down to a catch-weight for the Bradley fight.

The one fighter we almost surely won’t see the 34-year-old Cotto is WBC interim middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. The Kazakhstan knockout artist is in a position to force Cotto to fight him after Cotto’s optional title defense in his next bout.

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Cotto will need to make a big decision after his next fight whether it’s safe and profitable for him to keep his WBC 160lb title. If he does keep it, he’s going to need to battle Golovkin, and that’s a fight that could very well end in a similar manner as Cotto’s first fight with Antonio Margarito, but in a much more one-sided manner than that fight.

At 34, it’s doubtful that Cotto will want to put himself in a situation where he takes a real bad beat down, especially by someone with much better power than Margarito. Rather than take a ton of punishment by Golokvin in losing his WBC title, Cotto is expected to vacate his WBC title and then move back down to safer waters in going back to 154.

Cotto would then be in position to get fights against the likes of Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Kell Brook, Marcos Maidana, and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Those guys are around the same size as Canelo in terms of height. But if Cotto decides to stay at 160, he’ll be forced to defend his WBC title against Golovkin, and that could go very badly for Cotto. Golokvin isn’t 39-years-old and he doesn’t have a bad knee like Sergio Martinez did.

Cotto’s team did a good job of scouting out Sergio Martinez and choosing the right time to fight him in order to get an easy belt at 160. However, Golovkin is the real thing, and this would be no easy out for Cotto. There’s no weakness to be found in Golovkin, and for that reason I suspect Cotto will vacate his WBC title and move back down to 154 rather than face Golovkin.



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