By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) vs. Daniel Geale (31-3, 16 KOs) is now official for June 6th on HBO from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Cotto, 34, will be fighting the 33-year-old Geale, who was recently knocked out in the 4th round by WBA champion Gennady Golovkin.
Cotto and Geale will have a press conference on Thursday in New York to announce the kickoff for the fight in the next two months. Cotto recently signed a three-fight deal with Roc Nation Sports.
The fight against Geale is the first fight of his contract. His next two fights beyond that could come against the likes of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Floyd Mayweather Jr or Manny Pacquiao. Cotto will likely look to get a fight against Mayweather and Pacquiao. If he can’t get either of them, then you can expect him to take the Canelo fight. Cotto will probably be looking to maximize his income by taking on the biggest names.
This is a voluntary defense for Cotto and that’s why he’s facing an arguably easy mark instead of someone that could potentially knock him out like Golovkin. The Cotto-Geale fight is expected to be Cotto’s only defense of his WBC title because his next fight will have to be against Golovkin because he’s his WBC mandatory. That’s a fight that Cotto likely won’t take due to the dangerous involved.
Golovkin’s the real thing at 160, and it would be a fight that Cotto might have problems with unless he vacates or lets the WBC strip him of his title without facing Golovkin.
What’s unclear is why Cotto is bothering to even defend the WBC title because he’s taking nothing but heat from boxing fans for failing to take the Golovkin or Canelo fights. Those are the guys that fans want to see Cotto fight, and those are the ones where he would get the most money. Fighting Geale isn’t who fans want to see Cotto fighting. If he tries to stick this fight on HBO pay-per-view, it’ll likely result in horrible PPV numbers.
Geale isn’t a big puncher, as his record shows. Therefore, he’s not someone that Cotto has to worry about like he would if he faced Golovkin. For Cotto, this would be his third straight easy fight after getting beaten by Austin Trout in December of 2012 and Floyd Mayweather Jr in May of 2012.
Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach has been saying that Cotto is a different fighter since he took over as his trainer in 2013, with Cotto winning his last two fights against Delvin Rodriguez and Sergio Martinez. However, neither of those fighters looked good, and Cotto appeared to be the same fighter he’s always been only a little older. The only thing that’s changed is he’s been matched up against weaker opposition since his loss to Trout.
Former IBF middleweight champion Sam Soliman sees Geale beating Cotto. “[I’ve got] Daniel Geale to win this one,” Soliman said via Fightnews.com. “Both in speed and defense, Geale is the better boxer of the two. The hometown advantage is the biggest glitch for any fighter who travels. BUT in the middleweight division, Australians are very good at playing the away games. Geale and myself have proven that time and time again! Cotto and Geale are equal in strength. Cotto is naturally a bigger puncher in his natural light middleweight division. Geale is a natural middleweight, which gives him size over Cotto.”
It’s hard to take Geale serious as a puncher because he’s not proven to be a KO threat at 160. Cotto is definitely the bigger puncher of the two, but that doesn’t mean much.
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