Cotto-Canelo undercard leaves a lot to be desired

By Boxing News - 10/20/2015 - Comments

1-cotto-canelo-nyc (6)By Dan Ambrose: The boxing fans that purchase the November 21st fight between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) on HBO pay-per-view, they’re not going to get a great undercard for their money. In my opinion, the Cotto vs. Canelo undercard is a rather dull one to say the least.

What this means is that the fans will need to be mostly content with paying $65 to see the Cotto-Canelo main event because there aren’t big names on the undercard. There’s talk of WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward fighting on the undercard against little known 168lb contender Rohan Murdock (18-1, 14 KOs) in the co-feature, but that fight hasn’t been announced yet and it’s still unknown if we’ll be seeing Ward on the card.

The fight card, which takes place at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, looks to have a skeleton crew of fights. Here’s what the fans will be seeing for their money on 11/21:

WBC super featherweight champ Miura (29-2-2, 22 KOs) battles unbeaten Francisco Vargas (22-0-1, 16 KOs). The fight is in the lower weight classes at 130, and neither of the fighters are household names among the casual boxing fans in the U.S. The hardcore fans know of Miura and Vargas, but they’re not mentioned a lot by the fans. We’re not talking about the likes of Roman Gonzalez, Adrien Broner or Danny Garcia.

In other action on the card, unbeaten featherweight contender Jayson Velez (23-0-1, 16 KOs) takes on Ronny Rios (24-1, 10 KOs). Velez is the same fighter who was given a very controversial 12 round draw last November in a fight against former IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich in Omaha, Nebraska. Velez appeared to lose the fight by an 8 rounds to 4 score, and yet he was still given a draw out of the fight. It wasn’t a popular decision at all. Hopefully, we won’t be seeing another robbery like that on this card because it’s always a real downer to have the undercard tainted by the judges handing down a controversial decision.

“On November 21, the best fighters in boxing will gather for one epic night in Las Vegas,” Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya. “Audiences will not only see the two biggest stars battle, Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez, but every fighter featured on the card brings the highest caliber of talent propelling the sport further into a new golden age of boxing.”

Unfortunately, the Cotto vs. Canelo fight won’t be as big as fans had hoped it would be. Would kills a lot of excitement in the fight was IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s destruction of IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux last Saturday night.

YouTube video

Golovkin’s performance was so impressive and so one-sided that it’s burned an image into the minds of the boxing community that cannot be erased. Because of that, the Cotto vs. Canelo fight is seen as little more than a fight that will be picking out Golovkin’s next victim rather than an opponent that has a chance of beating him. The Cotto-Canelo winner will need to really raise their game to have a chance of beating Golovkin.



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