By Chris Williams: WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) will be defending his newly won World Boxing Association title against an old veteran of many ring wars 37-year-old Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-1, 23 KO’s) on March 12th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The fight is an okay one given that it’s supposed to be a tune-up bout for Cotto to get him ready for his summer rematch with Antonio Margarito. However, the Cotto-Mayorga fight is going to be a pay-per-view bout.

I’m not precisely sure what the price will be for this card but you’d have to figure it’s going to be at least $40+. As for as I can tell, the only fighter that’s been nailed down for the undercard is Pawel Wolak, a junior middleweight contender with not a lot of power.

I don’t mind the Cotto-Mayorga fight so much because Cotto struggles with almost everyone he fights nowadays and you can’t be certain what you’re going to get out of him at this point in his career. But I’m not all that enthusiastic at having to pay big money to see this fight because Mayorga hasn’t exactly been the most active of fighters in the past couple of years.

Mayorga has fought only once since being stopped in the 12th round by Shane Mosley in 2008. Recently, Mayorga, looking fat around the middle, defeated B level fighter Michael Walker by a 9th round TKO on December 17th. Mayorga was hit a lot in that fight with flush shots from Walker.

Although Mayorga finally got his act together and took Walker out in the 9th, I didn’t like the way that Mayorga was getting tagged by Walker. If those were shots from Cotto, I think Mayorga would have to be peeled off the deck and dragged to his corner. And that’s the thing.

This looks like bad mismatch given how overweight, old and rusty Mayorga is. I’m okay with paying to see Cotto fight a relevant top contender, someone that would have a chance to beat him like Alfredo Angulo or Erislandy Lara, but Mayorga? That seems like too much of an easy fight to charge people to see it.

They’re going to have to really make the undercard of this fight excellent from top to bottom to get me to want to shell out $40 for it. For that kind of money, I could buy two extra-large pizzas, some soda and still have money left over for other things.