What are the odds that Pacquiao-Cotto II will be at a catch weight?

By Boxing News - 07/30/2010 - Comments

Image: What are the odds that Pacquiao-Cotto II will be at a catch weight?By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao will be satisfying his need to pick up and 8th world title when he easily destroys fellow Top Rank fighter Antonio Margarito on November 13th for the vacant World Boxing Council junior middleweight title.

After that fight, which boxing fans want to see, Pacquiao will either be facing Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Miguel Cotto in a rematch.

Since Pacquiao is likely going to be asking for a 50-50 deal with Mayweather in splitting up the pay-per-view and gate money for their fight, their fight will likely end up not getting made because of that. And if Pacquiao’s fight against Margarito gets poor PPV numbers, then you can probably pretty much kiss goodbye a future fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather, because Pacquiao will probably still be asking for a 50-50 deal with Mayweather.

I think this will turn Mayweather off towards a fight with Pacquiao and cause him to go in another direction rather than sign on for a 50-50 deal with a fighter that isn’t doing as well as him in PPV sales. Pacquiao will then fight Cotto again in a rematch that will probably be about as interesting to boxing fans as Pacquiao’s recent fight against Joshua Clottey.

How Arum will sell a second fight between Pacquiao and Cotto is anyone’s guess. I wonder, though, if Pacquiao will ask for another catch weight for a fight against Cotto. Pacquiao is going to be fighting Margarito at a 150 pound catch weight, which will be Pacquiao’s second catch weight bout in his last three fights.

As the new WBC junior champion, after having beaten Margarito for the vacant title, won’t that look kind of funny to be fighting Cotto at another catch weight? I mean, if you’re the so-called champion, shouldn’t catch weights be things of the past? I hope so. The last thing I want to see is Pacquiao fighting a unification bout at a catch weight of 150 or whatever weight he comes up with. God, I don’t want to see Pacquiao fighting yet another catch weight fight, especially if he’s the WBC champion.

The sanctioning bodies need to create some rules when it comes to fighters fighting at catch weights. I’m cool with it when it’s a non-title fight, but there’s too much room for abuse when you’re the champion and/or a really popular fighter that can get these things in fights to get an advantage over their opponent. It just doesn’t seem right, not for a title fight. I don’t know what to compare this with, because no other sport that I know of would allow catch weights or something similar.



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