By Dan Ambrose: WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman will reportedly give the green light to a fight this year between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, as long as they both sign a contract stating that the winner of the Canelo-Cotto fight will face WBC interim middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin next.
Cotto is taking a voluntary title defense against #6 WBC Daniel Geale (31-3, 16 KOs) on June 6th next month at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. If Cotto gets past Geale in their 157 pound catch-weight fight, he’s supposed to be defending his WBC title against Golovkin, his mandatory next.
Sulaiman will allow Cotto to bypass the Golovkin fight and face Canelo this year, but he’ll need to sign a contract stating that the winner of the fight will face Golovkin. It’s unfortunate that Sulaiman has to go to these lengths to get the winner of the Canelo vs. Cotto fight to defend against Golovkin, because they should do it simply because he’s the WBC mandatory and he’s considered to be the No.1 fighter in the 160 pound division.
Ring Magazine has Cotto as their middleweight champion and Golovkin as the next highest rated fighter in the division, but that’s clearly an oddball rating and makes no sense in the real world.
Cotto was given that prestigious ranking based on beating the gimpy-legged, 40-year-old Sergio Martinez rather than someone in their prime with two healthy legs like Golovkin. Cotto is clearly not in the same league as Golovkin in my view, and I don’t see Cotto as deserving a higher ranking than Golovkin.
“WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said if Cotto beats Geale, he’d allow him to face Alvarez on the condition that they both sign a contract to then subsequently defend against Golovkin,” Kevin Iole said on Yahoo Sports.
I think Canelo and Cotto will sign the contract to get their fight made, but I also see the winner of their fight vacating the WBC title immediately after their fight rather than the winner facing Golovkin and subsequently getting knocked out cold.
Sulaiman can pressure Canelo and Cotto to sign a contract stating that the winner of their fight will face Golovkin, but it won’t mean much if the winner of that fight turns around and vacates the WBC belt immediately instead of getting in the ring with Golovkin and taking a beating.
Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya has already said that he’s not going to consider putting Canelo in with Golovkin until two years from now. In other words, not until Golovkin is 35, heading towards 36. It seems pretty obvious that the idea is to match Canelo with Golovkin when he’s an aging fighter near the end of his career rather than in his prime.
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