By Dan Ambrose: Undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) could haul in a cool $40 million for an easy night’s work against WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s) on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Although some boxing fans think WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao is the sports’ cash cow, it’s clearly not the case. Mayweather makes more money because he’s self promoted, so nets bigger cash with every fight. Additionally, Mayweather has been bringing in bigger numbers for the most part compared to his Filipino counterpart.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Cotto can push Mayweather and give him problems on Saturday. Cotto figures that he’s Mayweather’s best opponent he’s ever faced, but I’m not so sure about that. Mayweather has been with some quality fighters over the years, and even a past his best Oscar De La Hoya is likely a better opponent than Cotto.
Cotto really only has five or six rounds to try and win this fight, because once the fight goes into the second half of the bout, Cotto’s skin will start to swell and tear, and he’ll run out of gas. Cotto is a good six-right fighter when taking on quality opposition, but beyond that and he’s very beatable. Mayweather won’t tire out, and he won’t cut up. Once the fight is in the second half, Mayweather will turn it up a notch and we’ll see Cotto struggle.
Cotto was blasted out by Antonio Margarito in 2008 and on the verge of being stopped by Joshua Clottey in 2009. Clottey would have stopped Cotto if he had kept throwing punches instead of fighting with his back against the ropes in the last four rounds of the fight. Cotto looked beaten 8th, but Clottey went into the sparring partner mode and just covered up the rest of the way. Pacquiao stopped Cotto in 2009.
Mayweather stands to make a ton of money of the Cotto fight brings in PPV numbers over 1.4 million buys. It’ll likely bring in those kinds of numbers, but I’m no so certain it will get much more than that because the fight is seen as a mismatch by boxing fans. When you have a mismatch going in the door, boxing fans tend to stay away in large numbers. The thing is the fight would be much bigger if Cotto’s old promoter Bob Arum had been matching Cotto against the top fighters in the division in the last couple of years, guys like Erislandy Lara, James Kirkland and Vanes Martirosyan instead of Ricardo Mayorga, Yuri Foreman and Antonio Margarito.
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