Cotto still with no opponent for June 6th fight

By Boxing News - 04/06/2015 - Comments

cotto552By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) only has two months to go before his June 6th fight in New York, and yet he still doesn’t have an opponent under contract for the fight. The longer the search goes for Cotto and his adviser Gaby Penagaricano the more likely it’s going to wind up as a rush job with the 34-year-old Cotto winding up with someone that will make it all but impossible for him to have the fight a pay-per-view bout.

As of now, #1 WBC Jorge Sebastian Heiland is in the spotlight for the fight. Heiland is completely unknown by casual boxing fans in the United States, and it’s going to be very tough for Cotto to ask fans to pay to see him fight the Argentinian fighter.

If HBO does show the fight they’re going to be taking a chance of televising a fight that might not bring good pay-per-view numbers. Even if the Cotto-Heiland fight winds up on regular HBO, it’s still not a bout that fans will want to set aside time on Saturday night to see.

Besides Heiland, there’s also IBF junior middleweight champion Cornelius Bundrage as a potential opponent for Cotto. Bundrage is nearing 42, and he’s not well-known either with the casual boxing fans in the U.S. If Cotto chooses Bundrage, it’s a fight that might not even bring in 100,000 PPV buys. It would be a perfect fight for ESPN, in my view. But beyond ESPN Friday Night Fights, I can’t see a lot of interest from fans wanting to see this bout.

The fight that boxing fans want to see is Gennady Golovkin vs. Cotto. But it’s not news that Cotto hasn’t shown much of any interest in taking that fight. Cotto is saying that he’s interested in facing Golovkin in the future, but he’s not saying when in the future. Presumably, Cotto will look to take the fight against Golovkin after he gets rematches against Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao out of the way.

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You would also have to think that Cotto will also face Saul “Canelo” Alvarez before he faces Golovkin. This means that it’s possible that by the time that Golovkin faces Cotto, we’ll have seen Cotto lose to Mayweather, Pacquiao and Canelo. I doubt that a Cotto vs. Golovkin fight would hold much interest by that point with boxing fans.

Golovkin will actually be doing Cotto a huge favor in fighting him at that point in his career because he’ll be seen by a lot of boxing fans as shot fighter. Since Cotto wasn’t willing to fight Golovkin while he was at the top of his game, I don’t see why Golovkin would want to fight him while he’s on the downside. The Golovkin-Cotto fight is only interesting right now in this narrow window of time. Once Cotto starts losing left and right to the Mayweathers, Pacquiaos and Canelo’s in three consecutive fights, Golovkin will look bad if he agrees to be the fourth guy that gets Cotto. It won’t be worth anything.



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