De La Hoya: Canelo vs. Cotto is the biggest fight to be made now

By Boxing News - 06/07/2015 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions President got his wish last night with WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) smashing an over-matched Daniel Geale (31-4, 16 KOs) in a 4th round knockout last Saturday night.

De La Hoya needed Cotto to beat Geale for him to move on and face Golden Boy flagship fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) for later this year. De La Hoya has been pretty vocal about his belief that the Cotto-Canelo fight winding up being a better fight in terms of entertainment compared to last month’s “Fight of the Century” between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

That or may not be true. We do know that Canelo looked like a limited fighter with stamina problems in his loss to Mayweather, and in his other important fights against Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout. De La Hoya was careful in matching Canelo against James Kirkland in his last fight rather than putting him in with someone that has a good chance of beating him like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade and a rematch with Lara.

“It’s the biggest fight to be made now,” De La Hoya said via ESPN.com. “Cotto was very impressive. He took [Geale out]. The fight between Cotto and Canelo is huge. It’s the biggest fight in boxing after [Floyd] Mayweather-[Manny] Pacquiao. But the difference is that with Cotto-Canelo, you are guaranteed action.”

A loss for Canelo in this fight would be a huge disappointment for De La Hoya, because he can’t afford to have him beaten up or dominated by Cotto. It would be really bad for Canelo and De La Hoya for him to lose this fight. With Cotto, he’s already at the end of his career, and it won’t be a big deal if he gets beaten because he’s already made his money. But for Canelo and Golden Boy, it would be really bad for him to get knocked out in this fight because he’s got at least 10 years left in his career.

De La Hoya has been saying that Canelo will carry the sport of boxing on his shoulders for the next 10 years after Mayweather and Pacquiao retire. That’s not going to happen if Cotto annihilates Canelo in the fall. I don’t think the fans will ever forget the sight of Canelo getting stopped by Cotto. It would have a lasting impression kind of like how Victor Ortiz is remembered by fans for being knocked out by Mayweather.

De La Hoya is obviously hoping that the Canelo vs. Cotto bout will bring in a lot of PPV buys on HBO. I think it’ll do decent numbers, but nothing great. It’s a fight that might bring in 600,000 PPV buys, but that’s about all I can see. Cotto and Canelo are not Mayweather or Pacquiao type fighters in terms of talent or popularity. When Canelo and Cotto headline their own PPV cards, they typically bring in around 300,000 PPV buys.

There’s no comparison between them and guys like Mayweather and Pacquiao in the PPV numbers. For some reason, Canelo and Cotto just haven’t been able to get to the next level in terms of being big sellers on PPV. Canelo has a lot of time to maybe become a big seller, but he keeps having poor performances and that undermines him. He looked terrible against Trout, Mayweather and Lara. If he looks bad in losing to Cotto, or if he looks bad in winning, then I think it’s going to prolong the amount of time it’s going to take before Canelo becomes a big PPV seller.



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