By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) have agreed to come in at the lowest weight possible for the middleweight division at 155lbs for their catch-weight fight in November on HBO pay-per-view, says Dan Rafael.
The 155 catch-weight is just over the middleweight limit to make the fight still a middleweight bout. The middleweight division goes from 155 to 160, so they barely made it with that weight.
There are still things that need to be agreed on before the two superstars can put pen on paper to sign the contract. The date and the venue are two areas that need to be agreed on. As reported before, they’re looking to stage the fight in Las Vegas, Nevada on either November 7th or November 21st. There’s nothing golden about either date as far as them being something that would favor either fighter.
Presumably the purse split has already been agreed on, as it’s not being mentioned as one of the areas that still need to be decided.
Having the weight at 155 makes it nearly a junior middleweight contender rather than at middleweight, and you have to wonder why Cotto even bothers to keep the WBC middleweight title given his habit of having his opponents challenge him at catch-weights rather than the full weight for the division.
You have to figure that this catch-weight business will eventually be removed from possibilities by the sanctioning bodies when it comes to champions defending their titles. By champions being able to push their challengers to fight at a catch-weight, it strengthens their position to hold onto their titles. It’s very surprising that the sanctioning bodies are still letting champions do this when defending their belts because it’s an area where a lot of fans feel is an unfair for the challengers. If this was another sport such as football, it would look bad if a defending Super Bowl champion could insist that their opposing teams agree to come in at a certain weight for each player. It would come across as unfair and tilted in the favor of the Super Bowl team being able to keep winning Super Bowls in the future.
Canelo is fortunate that he’s been fighting at 155 lately and seems to enjoy this new weight for his fights. With the way that Canelo rehydrates into the mid-170s, he’s pretty much a full middleweight at this point in his career, but he’s able to take off a lot of weight to drain down to 155. How much longer the 24-year-old Canelo can do this is the big question.
As far as Cotto getting any advantage out of having the fight take place at 155, I don’t think there’s going to be any advantage unless Canelo suddenly starts struggling making the 155lb weight. I do think Canelo would feel stronger and would be far better fighter if he moved up in weight to middleweight or better yet, super middleweight, because when you have to take off 17 to 20 pounds like Canelo to get down to 155, it’s going to be impossible for him to be at his best. That might explain why Canelo has stamina problems in his fights. He seems to be strong in the early rounds, and the steadily gasses out after that.
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