By Chris Williams: You’d think that with the way that Floyd Mayweather Jr. struggled to beat WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto by a 12 round last weekend that Mayweather’s appeal would have slipped a couple of notches with boxing fans, but that’s not the case.
Because of Mayweather’s decision to fight Cotto’s fight by brawling with him instead of boxing, Mayweather has endeared himself with a lot of boxing fans that like to see all action fights.
If anything, Mayweather is now even more popular than he was before the fight judging by the appreciation he’s receiving from fans around the world.
Mayweather abandoned his usual safety first boxing style for this fight and decided to fight Cotto on the inside in a toe-to-toe battle. Despite not having the same size or power of the stronger and bigger Cotto, Mayweather was still the better fighter. It does without saying that the fight was a tough fight for Mayweather that caused some bloodshed on his part, but the fact of the matter is he proved that he can beat a slugger like Cotto fighting with Cotto’s game plan. Mayweather is getting a lot of respect because of this fight, and it shows you how versatile he is as a fighter.
Mayweather could bring in as much as $70 million for the Cotto fight once the final pay per view totals are announced. If the Cotto-Mayweather fight brings in over 2 million PPV buys like Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is projecting it will be, Mayweather could get huge money for this fight. With him making $70 million or so, Mayweather hardly needs a fight against Manny Pacquiao, because it would mean that he would have to give Pacquiao a 50-50 purse split. That would get in the way of Mayweather making huge money for that fight despite it being a bigger fight than the Cotto fight in terms of over all numbers. This is why the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight won’t take place unless Pacquiao agrees to a 60-40 deal along with Olympic style random drug testing.
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