By Dan Ambrose: It’s now official that WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) will be facing Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) on November 21st at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to Dan Rafael, Cotto and Canelo didn’t want to fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, because Floyd Mayweather Jr’s banner is draped down the side and it has some of Mayweather’s gear at the entrance of the place. They didn’t want to fight in Mayweather’s building, which makes a lot of sense because both fighters were beaten by Mayweather in the past, and those were hard defeats for both guys to stomach.
Having to be reminded of the defeats by fighting in the same venue that they lost in couldn’t have been a good feeling for these two catch-weight fighters. They both have become specialists at fighting catch-weights, and it’ll be interesting to see if Canelo and Cotto will spend the remainder of their careers fighting at catch-weights to gain an edge over their opposition or will they finally just step up and fight at the normal weights for whatever division they’re fighting in.
Both Canelo and Cotto are currently fighting at middleweight in catch-weight fights. It would be good to see them face whatever fears they have and just fight at the full weight for the 160lb division like Gennady Golovkin does. Canelo is heavier than Golovkin, yet he’s still fighting at catch-weights of 155lb pounds instead of at the full weight for the division.
“Not 100% done just yet but I’m told Cotto-Canelo will be 11/21 at Mandalay Bay. Good deal for every1 & HBO PPV gets preferred date. #boxing,” Dan Rafael said on his Twitter. “Mandalay better for Cotto-Canelo because they didn’t want to be in building w/ Floyd banner draped down side & gear on display at entrance. Cotto-Canelo basically didn’t want to be in a ‘Mayweather building.’ 11/21 works well in LV for Cotto-Canelo because better date for HBO than 11/7 & 11/19 at MGM is Latin Grammys. Main audience already in city. Cotto-Canelo will be biggest fight at Mandalay Bay since Oscar De La Hoya knocked out Vargas in 2002.”
The Cotto-Canelo fight will be televised on HBO pay-per-view. It’s unknown what price will be charged for the fight, but hopefully it’s nothing something ridiculous like $99 like we saw for the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight. You just never know.
It would be sad if Golden Boy Promotions and Roc Nation Sports, the two promoters for this fight, justify putting a price tag of $99 on it because they felt it was like a mini-fight of the Century x 2 type of fight rather than a simple fight matching two middleweights who are fighting over Cotto’s WBC paper title.
The fighter that is considered by many boxing fans to be the real middleweight champion is WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, who is hoping to face the winner of this fight. We still don’t know if the Cotto-Canelo winner will bother fighting Golovkin. It would be a shame if the winner vacated the WBC title and moved on rather than facing Golovkin. Don’t laugh. It might actually happen. Cotto hasn’t shown much interest in fighting Golovkin, and he started stuttering when HBO analyst Max Kellerman asked him after his last fight against Daniel Geale if he’d be interested in fighting Golovkin if he got past Canelo.
Many fans believe that Canelo will be too young, too fast and too strong for the 34-year-old Cotto. If that happens, then we might actually see a Canelo-Golovkin fight. If Canelo loses, then I suspect Cotto will vacate his WBC title and move on in another direction in trying to get rematches against Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao, both of which beat him previously.
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