By Dan Ambrose: It’s starting to look more and more like former four division world champion Miguel Cotto won’t be fighting in 2016. The 35-year-old Cotto had been looking to fight 43-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez next, but that fight has proven to be an elusive one for the Puerto Rican star.
Marquez wants Cotto to come all the way down to 147 to fight him rather than agreeing to meet him at a catch-weight of 150lbs. It’s understandable why Marquez would want to fight Cotto at 147 rather than 150. It’s been two years since Marquez fought Mike Alvarado in 2014 at welterweight.
With Marquez being a featherweight originally when he started his career, it would be asking a lot for him to fight at 150lbs against Cotto.
Cotto wanted to fight in the summer, but since he’s been unable to find a big name, he’s now looking to fight in the fall. Whether Cotto can get a big name at that point or not is unclear. If Cotto is willing to wait until December, he could wind up fighting Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a rematch. That would be a big fight for Cotto, who lost to Canelo by a close 12 round decision last November in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Cotto could fight in October if Manny Pacquiao doesn’t fight in that month, according to Ringtv.com. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has set aside October 15 for the Filipino to fight at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. Just because Arum has set the date aside doesn’t mean Pacquiao will fght in that month. If he doesn’t, then Cotto will look to fight in that month if he can get the big name that he wants.
Cotto is facing the same predicament that many other aging boxing stars face at some point in their careers. When the stars get older, they get spoiled and only want to fight other stars for the big money fights. When there simply aren’t any stars for them to fight, they tend to stay inactive while waiting for a star to free up.
The inactivity shortens what’s left of their career. Cotto should try and fight one of the top junior middleweights like the Charlo brothers, Erislandy Lara or Demetrius Andrade if he can’t get a fight against Marquez, but he probably won’t do that. It’s too dangerous for Cotto. He seems to be looking to get a sure thing win before he faces Canelo in a rematch either this year or in 2017.
It’s going to be interesting to see who Cotto winds up facing this year if anyone at all. If Cotto selects an easy mark opponent, which would seem likely, he’s going to have a hard time selling it on HBO PPV, because he’s not popular enough to bring in a lot of PPV buys if he fights a poor opponent.
For Cotto to bring in a lot of PPV buys on HBO, he needs a star like Canelo Alvarez or Manny Pacquiao. We don’t know who Pacquiao will be fighting if he decides to come back in October. It’s not likely that he’ll want to fight someone as big as Cotto. The reason being is because Cotto has been fighting in the 160lb weight division lately, and Pacquiao probably won’t want to fight someone that will have a huge weight advantage over him.