Roach: Golovkin’s name hasn’t been mentioned by Cotto’s adviser as a potential opponent for next fight

By Boxing News - 02/19/2015 - Comments

Final Press Conference(Photo credit: Will Hart/HBO) By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach shut down any talk of WBA 160 pound champion Gennady Golovkin as being a potential next opponent for the 34-year-old Cotto by saying that Cotto’s adviser Gaby Penagaricano hasn’t brought up Golovkin’s name in talking about potential opponents for Cotto’s next fight in May or June.

Penagaricano has reportedly already given Roach two names that he wants him to give an up down vote of approval for in terms of Cotto’s next fight. Roach says that Penagaricano is going to give him an additional two names that he wants him to evaluate.

Of those four names, Roach will pick out the best guy for Cotto, just as he did with the 39-year-old Sergio Martinez and 34-year-old Delvin Rodriguez in Cotto’s last two fights. Cotto won those fights, but he also wasn’t facing the cream of the middleweight division.

Sergio Martinez, who was coming off of two knee surgeries on his right leg and a 14 month layoff, clearly wasn’t the same fighter three years ago when he beat Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in 2012. Delvin Rodriguez was just some guy who’d been easily beaten by Cotto conqueror Austin Trout not too long ago.

“It hasn’t been brought up to me yet,” Roach said to Fighthype about Golovkin being mentioned to him by Cotto’s adviser Gaby Penagaricano as a potential opponent. “The deal I have with Gaby is that he negotiates the fight, he gives me three names and asks me who I want him to fight out of the three names. That’s my piece of the pie. I just give my opinion and why I think he’s the best fight for him.”

YouTube video

If Cotto’s adviser isn’t mentioning Golovkin’s name as a potential opponent for Roach to select from as part of a four-fighter group of names, then it’s very likely that Cotto won’t be fighting Golovkin anytime soon. That’s fine right now, but it’s going to look potentially bad if Cotto vacates or is stripped of his title by the World Boxing Council for failing to defend his WBC title against his mandatory challenger Groves, the WBC interim middleweight champion.

The WBC has already said that Cotto has to defend his WBC title against Golovkin after he takes his next fight. If Cotto chooses to give up the title or have is stripped from him, it’s going to make him look bad in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans.

They’ll see Cotto as having ducked Golovkin not once but twice in going after the hobbled and old Sergio Martinez first in beating him for his WBC title, and then choosing not to fight Golovkin again by not defending his WBC title against him.

Roach recently said that Sergio Martinez was still in his prime, which is obviously hard to believe after watching how poor he looked in his loss to Cotto and in his fight against Martin Murray.

Tim Bradley and Brandon Rios are two of the names that have been getting mentioned a lot as the possible next opponent for Cotto. They would have to move up from welterweight and skip the junior middleweight division to fight Cotto at middleweight. It will obviously look bad in Cotto fighting a welterweight in defending his WBC middleweight title.

For all the middleweight contenders that have been waiting for a title shot, it might not sit too well with them getting passed over for a title shot by a welterweight. Cotto already passed up a bunch of middleweights in getting a title shot against former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez last year in June. Cotto moved up from junior middleweight and didn’t have to fight anyone at middleweight in order to get a title shot straightaway against WBC 160 pound champion Sergio Martinez.



Comments are closed.