By Dan Ambrose: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman says that the winner of the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Miguel Cotto fight will have to face WBC interim champ Gennady Golovkin. Whether they actually do so is another question. Cotto and Canelo have both seemed less than excited about fighting Golovkin when asked about it.
The rumored pay-per-view numbers for Golovkin’s fight against David Lemieux last Saturday night obviously won’t help matters. The Golovkin-Lemieux fight is rumored to have brought in only 125,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO.
“The winner of Cotto and” Canelo “has to face Golovkin,” Suliaman said via am.com.mx. “That is stipulated. It is a fight that may be made until next year. In November it will be Cotto-‘Canelo ‘, so the winner will start negotiations and the fight against Gennady could be around March or April.”
Cotto is nearing the end of his career, and I don’t believe for a second that he’ll agree to fight Golovkin if he gets past Canelo on November 21st in their fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya has already talked about having an immediate rematch between Cotto and Canelo for next year, and maybe even a trilogy. That means we could be seeing Cotto and Canelo face each other three consecutive times.
Obviously, the WBC middleweight title will be cast off immediately after their fight in November. I don’t think the title means much Canelo or Cotto. I see it as a brief status thing that they want, but not something they want to fight to keep. If it means they’ll need to fight the likes of Golovkin, Tureano Johnson or other contenders that they have no interest in facing, they’ll vacate the title no matter what Suliaman says.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_gduRtMGY4
I really don’t see Canelo or Cotto fighting Golovkin. I do think that Canelo will eventually face Golovkin once he’s older and starting to show signs of slipping, but even then, I think he’ll need to give Canelo some kind of a weight handidcap to give him an edge where he feels comfortable enough to take the fight.
“The only way to avoid confronting ‘GGG’ would be to sign an agreement in which they agree on another solution. But the WBC opinion is clear, the winner of the November 21 to face Golovkin,” Suliaman said.
Golovkin already agreed to step aside this time so that the Cotto-Canelo fight can take place on November 21st at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. I don’t think Golovkin will agree to step aside again, because it would be painfully obvious that he’s being strung along with no real serious intention of ever allowing him to get a shot at the title.
I think it would be a waste of time for Golovkin to agree to another step aside deal because I don’t see it worthwhile for him to keep stepping aside. If Canelo and Cotto end up facing each other 5 times in a row, Golovkin would be sitting around waiting for a shot at one of them in three years from now. By then, both guys will be well beaten and used up like we saw with Rafael Marquez and Israel Vazquez after their 4 wars. Golovkin could probably hit Cotto and Canelo with a feather and knock them out under those circumstances.
“A confrontation between the winner of Cotto-Canelo and Golovkin will be one of the biggest fights in history,” Suliaman said.
It would definitely be a huge event for Golovkin to face the winner of the Cotto vs. Canelo fight, but I still don’t see it happening. Cotto and Canelo can make good money fighting weak opponents like Alfredo Angulo, James Kirkland and Daniel Geale. The casual boxing public eat up those mismatches, and won’t press hard for them to face Golovkin.
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