Pacquiao vs. Cotto II at Cowboy Stadium on November 13th?

By Boxing News - 07/12/2010 - Comments

By Chris Williams: The drop dead date is due this week for unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (41-0, 25 KO”s) to say whether or not he’ll take the fight with Manny Pacquiao (51-3-2, 38 KO’s) on November 13th. But it’s looking like Mayweather will pass on the deal that was offered to him by Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter from Top Rank. With the Mayweather fight off the table, Arum will quickly insert either WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto or former two-time welterweight champion Antonio Margarito in as substitutes. They both fight in Arum’s stable, and will make it much easier to put together a fight with Pacquiao.

Margarito has a small chance of being picked as Pacquiao’s next opponent, but it’s highly unlikely. He was turned down by the Nevada Athletic Commission last Friday in his efforts to try and get his boxing license back, and Top Rank president Todd duboef is talking about trying to reapply with the Nevada Commission instead of taking their advice and applying to the California Athletic Commision, the ones who took Margarito’s boxing license away last year.

As such, the chances are very high that Pacquiao will be fighting Cotto next. If I was a betting man, that’s where I would be putting my money. Cotto is more popular than Margarito in the United States, would bring in bigger pay-per-view numbers than a Margarito-Pacquiao fight, and besides that Cotto has the World Boxing Association junior middleweight title in his possession. The seven-time world champion Pacquiao wants nothing better than a chance to win an eighth world title so he can have bragging rights as one of the best fighters in history.

It’s too bad that the eighth title would be coming against a guy that Pacquiao already beat quite badly last year in November. There’s talk of the Cotto-Pacquiao II fight taking place at a catch weight instead of the full 154 pound light middleweight limit. If so, then that would be the second world title that Pacquiao has fought for with a catch weight being involved. The purpose of a catch weight is to give one of the fighters – in this case, Pacquiao – a small handicap so as to give them a better chance at winning the fight. Having the bigger fighter melting down extra weight often has the effect of weakening them slightly, and making them more beatable.

It’s interesting that they have this thing in boxing, because I can’t think of any other sport that has a similar contraption for this. Can you imagine basketball or football having something like this? Whatever the case, hopefully Pacquiao doesn’t fight with a catch weight for a second bout with Cotto, because he proved in his last win over Cotto, a 12th round knockout, that he doesn’t need a catch weight to beat him.



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