By Sean McDaniel: The December 4th title bout between World Boxing Association (WBA) junior middleweight champion and unbeaten middleweight contender Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. could be taking place at New York’s Madison Square Garden, at least that’s where Cotto and Chavez’s mutual promoter Bob Arum would like for the fight to take place. Cotto is popular in the New York and has a large fan base over there. Arum would like to take advantage of that.

Arum had previously been kicking around the idea of putting the Cotto-Chavez fight at the Cowboy Stadium, but it looks like he’s changed his mind for some reason. It might be a smarter move, because it’s doubtful that Cotto has a large fan base in Texas and it would be asking a lot for Cotto’s large bases in California and the New York area to have to travel all the way to Texas to watch him fright. Chavez Jr. would have drawn a good number of fans from around the Texas area, but not likely enough for the fight to be successful.

In an article by Dan Rafael of ESPN, Arum talks about Madison Square Garden, remarking “We’re very fortunate in that the Knicks and the Rangers are not playing at home so we have the Garden on hold. I believe that Cotto is such a tremendous draw in New York. How could you pass that up?” The bout isn’t really all that interesting other than wondering how well Chavez Jr. will do now that he’ll finally be fighting a live opponent after many years fighting exclusively B level fighters. It would have been much more interesting to see Cotto against someone that had actually fought and beaten someone before like Antonio Margarito.

But Margarito has already been picked out by Arum to fight Manny Pacquiao on November 13th. However, Margarito will get his shot against Cotto very soon, because he’s another Top Rank fighter like Cotto.

Chavez was supposed to be fighting light middleweight contender Pawel Wolak but Chavez pulled out of the fight yesterday. It would have been a good fight for Chavez because at least he would have known whether he deserves to be in the same ring with Cotto. Chavez will be training with Manny Pacquiao in the Philippines to help him prepare for the Margarito fight. It would be nice if some day Pacquiao could return the favor, because Chavez no doubt will be fighting Margarito someday soon, because the pool of fighters for Top Rank is rather thin around the welterweight to middleweight weight classes.