By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight belt holder Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) reportedly has signed a multi-year fight with Roc Nation on Thursday. The offer that Cotto, 34, received was too good for him to turn down. He had been working with Top Rank on a fight to fight basis before signing with Roc Nation.
Top Rank vice president Todd duBoef is said to be not too happy about the news of Cotto’s signing with Roc Nation.
The signing really doesn’t change much in terms of the guys that Cotto will be fighting. I think that’s what boxing fans mostly care about. They want to see Cotto fight WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao. However, it doesn’t look like Cotto will be fighting Golovkin anytime soon if ever.
Cotto will be fighting on June 6th in New York. The leading candidate for Cotto’s fight 41-year-old IBF junior middleweight champion Cornelius Bundrage. That’s a fight that will likely take place at a catch-weight in the middleweight division.
Unfortunately, it’s not a fight that the public is demanding, and it’s hard to see it generating any interest at all. If Cotto makes this a pay-per-view bout on HBO, which is likely, you can’t expect too many fans to want to spend money seeing it.
The other candidates for Cotto’s next fight is Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley, both of which are welterweights. It would be a pity if Cotto winds up taking a beating from Bundrage and losing his WBC middleweight title.
If Cotto is going to be bludgeoned into submission, he needs to take on Golovkin so that he can at least get a good payday in getting battered and beaten. With the Bundrage fight, it’s not one that will likely do well on pay-per-view or on regular HBO.
“I am just finishing the last part of my career by doing what is in the best interest for me and my family,” Cotto said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com
Cotto had similar things to say about the prospects of a fight against Golovkin.
“He [Golovkin] has to wait like anybody else,” Cotto told ESPN.com. “He can do whatever he wants. My career does not depend on Gennady Golovkin. Everything I do will be the best for me. That is what I will do. If that is fighting Gennady
Golovkin I will do it. If not, he can take the middleweight title. He can take it.”
Cotto seems to have become very, very careful with the kind of fights he’s taken at this point in his career. With him fighting a past his best and very ring rusty Sergio Martinez last June and before that against Delvin Rodriguez, Cotto seems to be getting matched against fighters that are sure thing wins for him.
If Cotto takes on Bundrage, Rios or Bradley, it can only be seen as a continuation of the type of match-making that’s been done for him since the Delvin Rodriguez fight.
Golovkin will surely take the WBC 160 pound title if Cotto vacates it, but I don’t see that as a move that will increase Cotto’s popularity with boxing fans, especially if he fights the likes of Bundrage, Rios or Bradley. I don’t see where Cotto comes out ahead if he ducks the Golovkin fight for a lesser one, and then vacates his WBC title.
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