Miguel Cotto vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on November 21st, says De La Hoya

By Boxing News - 07/11/2015 - Comments

cotto00000By Dan Ambrose: The mega-fight between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) and Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) is now on for November 21st, according to news from the World Boxing Council. They’re reporting that Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya is saying that the Cotto-Canelo fight will be taking place on this date.

There still isn’t a venue yet decided, but it’s down to either the MGM Grand or Thomas Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight is expected to be announced soon, with a promotional tour planned for August for New York, Puerto Rico, Mexico and California.

The fight between Cotto and Canelo will take place at a controversial catch-weight of 155 pounds rather than at the full weight of 160 pounds for the division. The sanctioning bodies are still allowing fighters to fight for world titles at catch-weights. This will likely change sometime in the future.

The Cotto vs. Canelo bout should be an interesting fight to pick what will likely be a future victim for WBC interim middleweight champion Genandy Golovkin. That’s if the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight doesn’t vacate the WBC middleweight title before they’re forced to take the risky fight against Golovkin. De La Hoya has already said Canelo won’t fight Golovkin for two more years. Cotto has said that he’ll save his sanctioning money if the WBC tries to force him to fight somebody.

The Cotto vs. Canelo fight will be on HBO pay-per-view. No world on how much the fight will cost on PPV. Hopefully it won’t be priced at $99 like the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight last May. It would be a huge disappointment if that’s a new beginning of boxing fans being charged $100 each time there’s a halfway fight.

The Cotto-Canelo fight is a good one, but it’s still definitely not one that you would consider being a “fight of the century2” type of event. It’s just a couple of simple fighters who both have been beaten when they’ve stepped up against the best, and who have pulled their careers around with careful match-making.

Canelo was easily beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013. Since then, Canelo has a controversial win over Erislandy Lara, and two victories over no longer relevant fighters in James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo. Canelo needs to fight a rematch against Lara to prove that he can beat him without controversy. Canelo also has a controversial win over Austin Trout from 2013 and a controversial draw against Jorge Juarez in 2006.

You can make an argument that Canelo’s record should really be 43-4 rather than 45-1-1. I definitely had Canelo losing to Juarez, Trout and Lara. That doesn’t mean that Canelo is a bad fighter. It just means he’s flawed and he can beat some guys, but loses to others. He’s not superstar material in my view. Just a bigger version of Marcos Maidana, who fights guys that are frequently lighter than him after he rehydrates to the 170s.

Cotto’s career has turned around with wins over Delvin Rodriguez, Sergio Martinez and Daniel Geale in his last three fights. Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach believes he’s turned his career around with his training, but a lot of boxing fans just think that Cotto is now being matched against weaker and/or older fighters in order to stop the hemorrhaging that had been going on with Cotto’s career before those fights. He’d lost to Mayweather and Trout in back to back fights before he started up with his recent fights against Rodriguez, Martinez and Geale.



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