By Jason Kim: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto has decided not to fight for the remainder of the year because he wants to let his recently operated shoulder heal and also because there’s no big named opponents for him to fight at this time. Cotto was supposed to be fighting Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on December 4th, but Chavez Jr. opted not to go along with his trainer Freddie Roach to the Philippines to start training Pacquiao. This in effect took a fight with Chavez Jr. off the table for Cotto.

The alternatives, fights against either Kermit Cintron or Vanes Martirosyan, were unappealing to Cotto, because he wanted to fight big named opponents. Next year, Cotto will likely be facing either Antonio Margarito or Manny Pacquiao in March 2011. Following that, he’ll take on whichever of those two he didn’t fight in March. And finally, to round out 2011, Cotto will fight Chavez Jr., as long as Chavez is interested in finally taking on a top tier fighter at that point.

Chavez will be fighting welterweight Alfonso Gomez on December 4th instead of Cotto. Chavez Jr. probably can beat Gomez, but you can’t really be too sure about that because Chavez was shook up in his last fight by the light hitting John Duddy in the 6th round.

Cotto, 29, only wants to take on big named opponents now. He was stopped a year ago by Pacquiao in a 12th round TKO loss. It was a fairly one-sided fight and it’s really hard to see any point in a rematch between the two, other than the fact that the fight will make money because boxing fans will still want to see the two of them fight again. It would be more interesting to see Cotto take on someone he hasn’t fought before rather than seeing him get beaten up again by Pacquiao.

A fight between Cotto and the winner – or loser – of the Paul Williams vs. Sergio Martinez fight would be highly interesting. Also, it would be appealing to see Cotto take on fellow Top Rank fighter Kelly Pavlik. Any one of these fights would be good fights for Cotto, as it would show him against different fighters instead of seeing him fight a pointless rematch with Pacquiao.

There’s really no suspense in seeing Cotto get taken apart again by Pacquiao. You can say that maybe the outcome would be different next time, but if you look at the shots that Cotto was taking in that fight and then look at the punishment he was taking in his recent fight against Yuri Foreman up until Yuri was injured, it’s hard to see Cotto doing any better against Pacquiao next time around.

It would likely be another disappointing one-sided fight with Pacquiao easily beating Cotto. Since it will be a pay per view bout, it will mean that boxing fans will have to pay $50 to $55 to see a one-sided rematch between Cotto and Pacquiao. There’s really no point in that fight taking place, other than to help Pacquiao and Cotto make more money.