Canelo vs. Cotto rematch possible early 2017

By Boxing News - 10/21/2016 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: A rematch between former four division world champion Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) and WBO junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) is being talked about in the four quarter of 2017. Canelo, 26, says he wants to fight the 35-year-old Cotto a second time. It’s not surprising that a rematch between Canelo and Cotto is now being talked about.

Their fight in 2015 brought in 900,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO. With that many buys, it goes without saying that they’ll be fighting each other again. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya was talking about possible two or three fights between them. If that’s the case, then it might be a while before Canelo faces IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs).

If Golden Boy is going to match Canelo up against Cotto for a potential two more fights, then the Golovkin fight might need to be pushed to 2018 or even 2019, depending on if Canelo faces Billy Joe Saunders and David Lemieux as well.

Canelo is open to taking the fight if it could be negotiated. They would need to determine the money split, weight, date and venue. All that would take time. Canelo beat Cotto by a 12 round unanimous decision last November on HBO pay-per-view. The scores from the three judges were as follows: 118-110, 119-109 and 117-111. Many boxing fans thought the fight should have been scored a draw, as Cotto appeared to win six rounds. Since there was no knockdowns in the fight, Cotto should have received a draw. Instead, he lost the fight by a set of lopsided scores that looked like they belonged to a different fight than the one that took place on the night.

said Canelo to ESPN.com.mx.

Canelo and Golden Boy needs to decide on which opponents they want for the first quarter of 2017, because they’re also interested in World Boxing Organization middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders and David Lemieux during that part of the year. There’s talk of Canelo fighting in February and May. He could fight Saunders or Lemieux in February and possibly Cotto in May; although it’s not likely that Cotto would be agreeable to fight Canelo in May.

September is supposedly on hold by Golden Boy to match Canelo against middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. It remains to be seen whether Golden Boy is serious about wanting to make the Canelo-Golovkin fight in 2017. If they are, then the fight would take place on the Mexican Independence Day holiday in September. You have to assume that the fight will be very difficult to make given Golden Boy’s stance that Golovkin must take a flat fee of $10 million for the fight. The fight could make over $100 million. That would leave Canelo with a considerable payday compared to the money Golovkin gets.

“(2017) will be a great year for ‘Canelo’, the fans and for fans of ‘Canelo’ Alvarez. (A rematch with Cotto) definitely, yes,” said Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Robert Diaz to ESPN.com.mx. “The first was very good fight and who would not like to see the rivalry between Mexico and Puerto Rico? We are very good friends Miguel Angel Cotto, Bryan (Perez) and Hector (Soto).”

To be honest, the previous Canelo-Cotto fight was not an exciting one to watch for many boxing fans. Canelo appeared to have a HUGE size advantage. There wasn’t a weight given by HBO of the two fighters the night of the fight, but in looking at the two of them, Cotto looked like a small junior middleweight/welterweight, and Canelo looked like a swelled up middleweight. Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach estimated that Canelo rehydrated to 185lbs on the night of the fight. Whether that was true or not is unknown, because he wasn’t weighed. What was known was that Canelo was too big for Cotto to stand and fight with.

Cotto’s shots that had destroyed the 180lb Daniel Geale in four rounds in their fight in June of 2015, bounced off of Canelo like they were pesky jabs. Cotto didn’t have the size to hurt Canelo with his shots. You can argue that the fight was won and lost in the weight difference between the two fighters. Never the less, Cotto got the better of Canelo when he used his boxing skills and jab to control the fight from the outside. Where Cotto got in trouble was when he made the decision to stand and trade with Canelo for a number of rounds. There was no way that Cotto would win that war with the weight that he came into the fight with on the night.

If the Canelo vs. Cotto rematch does take place in early 2017, then Cotto’s only chance of winning the fight is if he can get a rehydration clause in the contract, because he’s not going to beat Canelo if he’s outweighed by 15 to 20 pounds on the night of the fight.

The big question is will the boxing public buy a second fight between Canelo and Cotto? I think some fans will, but a lot of the fans won’t. The fans that saw the first fight between them will figure it’s a fight that Cotto cannot win due to his lack of size. Since the judges tend to score Canelo’s fights in his favor based on his superior slugging ability with his opponents, Cotto is not likely going to win a decision against Canelo by him trying to box him for 12 rounds. The judges will give Canelo round after round if he’s the one that is doing all the slugging. There’s really no need for a second fight between Canelo and Cotto, because they already fought each other and the judges gave Canelo a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision win. While some boxing fans thought that the fight should have been scored a draw, there weren’t enough of them to pressure Canelo and Golden Boy to make a second fight. Cotto has been inactive since his loss to Canelo a year ago.

That’s not good. When you’re out of sight the way Cotto has been, then you’re out of mind. Cotto has not been staying relevant to fans by keeping busy. It’s not that he and his team haven’t been trying to get an opponent. It’s just that they’ve been looking at fighting welterweights like Juan Manuel Marquez and Lamont Peterson. If Cotto had picked out someone from his own weight class at 154, he probably could have easily gotten a fight against the likes of Erislandy Lara, Jermall Charlo, Jermell Charlo or Demetrius Andrade. Those guys would be a handful, but at least they would have been fights that Cotto could have made.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Canelo vs. Cotto rematch brings in far fewer pay-per-view buys on HBO than their first fight did. With Cotto not fighting, and Canelo facing over-matched guys in Amir Khan and Liam Smith, neither fighter has helped themselves in the past year. Canelo’s pay-per-view numbers having been dropping in his last two fights against Khan and Liam Smith. Canelo’s fight against Khan brought in 600,000 buys on HBO, and his fight against Smith jus 300,000 buys. If that trend continues, we could see even lower numbers for a Canelo-Cotto rematch. When and if that happens, it would be the time for Golden Boy to hit the emergency button by matching Cotto against Golovkin right away so that they can start increasing Canelo’s popularity again.

The soft match-making that Golden Boy has been doing for Canelo in the last two years might be hurting his brand. When you take lesser opponents like with the case of Canelo, it has a stunting effect. His popularity isn’t being increased with these safe fights. The PPV numbers suggest that Canelo’s popularity is taking a hit.