By Chris Williams: WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (46-2-2, 25 KO’s) would like nothing better than to get a fight against WBA junior middleweight title holder Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s). The only problem is that Martinez doesn’t fight for Top Rank like Cotto, and Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum likes to keep his fights in house. That alone will make a fight between Cotto and Martinez all but impossible to put together. But there are other factors that would preclude this fight from happening, like the fights that Arum already has Cotto in line for in 2011.

Cotto is facing Ricardo Mayorga on March 12th, and there’s no telling what will happen in that fight. Cotto is utterly hittable and has taken savage punishment in the last three years of his career. Mayorga may be old at 37, but he has a real chance in there to cause an upset by knocking Cotto out. I frankly wouldn’t be surprised in the least if Mayorga beats Cotto. But even if he doesn’t, he’s still going to put a major pounding on Cotto and erode his skills already more than they already are. What’s left of Cotto will then take on the recently beaten up Antonio Margarito in the summer.

Cotto already got stomped by Margarito two years ago, and it’s very possible that Margarito will be able to repeat that performance just by staying on his feet and putting hands on Cotto for 12 rounds. Margarito is hard to stop and if he stays up and keeps hitting Cotto over and over again, he’s going to likely hit him hard enough to stop him. Cotto was on the verge of being stopped last year by Joshua Clottey in the later rounds of the fight when Cottey suddenly stopped punching and went into his rope a dope mode for the rest of the fight.

Margarito won’t do that. He’ll just keep hitting Cotto until something gives. For this reason, I have serious doubts that Cotto will survive this fight. But if he does, Arum will likely immediately put him back in with Manny Pacquiao for another big payday. No way will Arum want to lessen the value of Cotto by having him fight Sergio Martinez in between that and get torn apart. Cotto stands very little chance of beating Martinez now, and especially after he gets finished fighting Mayorga and Margarito. It’s best that Martinez forget about his pipe dream about fighting Cotto and focus on more realistic goals, like maybe a fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr or David Lemieux in 2011.