By Jim Dower: WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (51-3-2, 38 KO’s) could end up fighting Miguel Cotto one more time if the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight doesn’t end up getting made. Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, is thinking of matching Pacquiao up with the winner of the Cotto vs. Yuri Foreman fight next month on June 5th at Yankee Stadium. Arum would also like to match Pacquiao up against Antonio Margarito, but that fight would hinge on whether or not Margarito could get his boxing license back in the United States, which may not happen soon. This would leave Pacquiao fighting the Cotto-Foreman winner for his final fight of his career in November of this year.
Talk about anticlimactic. Cotto already was beaten by Pacquiao in November 2009 in a 12th round knockout defeat at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas. The fight got a lot of hoopla going in, but turned out to be a real dude with Pacquiao dominating the recently beaten Cotto badly for 12 rounds. Cotto looked like a shell of his former self after a 11th round knockout loss to Margarito a year earlier and a war with Joshua Clottey in 2009.
There’s a good chance that Cotto will beat the light hitting Foreman next month. And this will set up a 2nd fight between Pacquiao and Cotto for boxing fans to have to sit through. I just don’t know how on earth they’ll get fans excited about this fight. It isn’t as if anything has changed. Cotto will have had exactly one fight, against Foreman, in between his knockout loss to Pacquiao last year. Cotto-Pacquiao II will probably bring in decent pay-per-view numbers, but it’s not really the kind of fight that will interest fans other than the diehard boxing fans of the two stars.
The problem here is that there won’t be any suspense involved. Since the first fight was totally dominated by Pacquiao, it likely that fans will be seeing Cotto as anything other than another victim for Pacquiao. This would be a really sad way to end Pacquiao’s career, I feel, because it’s like going back to an earlier level rather than progressing. I know Pacquiao is into collecting titles and this would be his 8th world title, but it seems like there’s other champions in the light middleweight division like WBC title holder Sergio Martinez who would be a lot more appealing opponent for Pacquiao than to watch him beat up Cotto again or destroy the obscure WBA light middleweight champion Foreman.
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