By Dan Ambrose: With WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) taking on one of the less dangerous middleweights in the division in #6 WBC Daniel Geale (31-3, 16 KOs) this Saturday night on HBO Championship Boxing, Cotto will be looking to make a good impression so that he can setup a big pay-per-view bout later this year against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

Cotto has to beat Geale and it in such a manner that boxing fans will be enticed to pay to see him fight Canelo. Cotto has been out of the ring for over a year, and he’s not doing a great job of staying active enough to stay in the minds of fans of the sport. In the last two years, Cotto has fought only twice.

That’s not enough if you’re going to try and ask fans to pay to see you fight. His match-up against the hobbled 40-year-old Sergio Martinez last year failed to bring in big PPV numbers, and it’s probable that his fight against Canelo will likely not bring in big PPV numbers as well.

You can expect the fight to possibly bring in 500,000 PPV buys, which is good for both Cotto and Canelo will they’re the individual headliner, but it’s obviously not good when they’re matched against superstars like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. That’s why it’s important for Cotto to really shine against Geale on Saturday night when they go at it in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Geale is planning on boxing Cotto’s head off in this fight by hitting, moving and not letting Cotto get his big power shots off. If Cotto is forced to try and beat the taller, longer-armed Geale with jabs rather than power shots, then it’s not going to go so well for the Puerto Rican fighter.

Cotto has a lot of scare tissue around his eyes, and he tends to swell up quickly when hit a lot. If Geale can get Cotto bleeding, he could get the victory on Saturday night. Cotto doesn’t fight well when he’s bleeding, and he tends to lose his confidence quickly when his opposition give him tough resistance.

The fights where Cotto does well is when he’s able to start off strong and dominate. Geale needs to prevent Cotto from starting off strong by hitting him and not standing there so that he can get off his left hook, which has become his primary weapon now that he’s being trained by Freddie Roach.

“The game plan is to go in and fight my fight,” Geale said via the dailytelegraph.com.au. “It’s not to get sucked in. It’s not to get caught up in what he [Cotto] is doing. It’s to do what I do best.”