By Dan Ambrose: With HBO deciding to instead show the WBC middleweight bout between champion Sergio Martinez vs. Sergeii Dzinziruk on March 12th, Bob Arum has moved his fighter WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto 35-2, 28 KO’s) to Showtime for a pay-per-view bout against Ricardo Mayorga (29-7-2, 23 KO’s) that will compete with the Martinez-Dzinziruk fight. It’s a tough choice, because the Martinez fight won’t have the huge price tag that the Cotto-Mayorga fight card will have.

However, the Cotto vs. Mayorga card will have some semi-decent fights between Yuri Foreman and Pawel Wolak and Donnie Nietes vs. Raul Garcia to further increase the value of the card. In contrast, the Martinez-Dzinziruk card has John Duddy vs. Andy Lee in middleweight action. Right now, I’d say it’s almost a tie between the quality of the two competing cards. However, the free price tag on the Martinez vs. Dzinziruk card makes it a lot more appealing.

Hopefully, Arum adds some more fights to the Cotto-Mayorga fight card because Foreman-Wolak isn’t a particularly interesting fight because of how boring Foreman’s fights are. He’s not a popular fighter and his hit, run and grab style of fighting is excruciatingly painful to watch. This isn’t Manny Pacquiao we’re talking here. Arum must be counting on Foreman being able to get a lot of Jewish fans from the New York area, as Foreman is Jewish and has a lot of fans on the East Coast. However, I don’t see Foreman as being a draw outside of the East Coast, and I think Arum needs to do a lot better than this if he wants to get a lot of PPV buys for this card.

Mayorga is 37, and has only fought once in the past couple of years, beating Michael Walker recently by a 9th round TKO. Mayorga’s inactivity and age is obviously why he’s been selected. Arum won’t want his cash cow Cotto beaten up between he takes on Antonio Margarito later on this Summer.