The weight was one of reasons why Cotto turned down Pacquiao fight

By Boxing News - 09/01/2012 - Comments

Image: The weight was one of reasons why Cotto turned down Pacquiao fightBy Chris Williams: One of the key issues that kept the Miguel Cotto vs. Manny Pacquiao rematch from taking place is the weight for the fight. Cotto’s attorney Gabriel Penagaricano said they couldn’t agree with Pacquiao’s management on what would be the weight for a second fight between the two fighters.

With negotiations at an impasse, Cotto moved on and decided to fight WBA World light middleweight champion Austin Trout on December 1st instead. At least by taking on Trout, Cotto wouldn’t have deal with weight issues.

Penagaricano told ESPN “We explored the Pacquiao fight. We discussed it for several days but there was no agreement. The weight was an issue and we didn’t agree on all relevant aspects of the deal, so at the end, there was no agreement.”

Although Penagaricano doesn’t say precisely what weight that Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum were asking for to fight Cotto, it’s likely that they wanted the fight to take place at a catchweight of 150 pounds. This is the weight that Arum had mentioned wanting to make the fight happen rather agreeing to have his fighter meet Cotto at the full weight for the division.

However, Cotto already had a bad experience in melting down for one of Pacquiao’s catchweights in their fight in 2009, and he obviously didn’t want to let that happen again. Besides that, Cotto has filled out since 2009 and he’s a stronger fighter at 154 lbs. To ask him to drain down to a weight that he’s not comfortable with would have likely put Cotto in another situation where he could potentially be weakened by fighting at a catchweight.

I think boxing needs to ban catchweight fights entirely for bouts that are considered on the record. I think it’s okay for exhibition bouts but not for fights that will end up an official record for the fighters, but the catchweights tend to favor one fighter over another. The guy that has to melt down in weight is pretty much always going to be the one the one that’s going to be negatively affected by these kinds of fights. If a smaller fighter feels he needs a handicap for weight in order to be competitive against a larger fighter, then he shouldn’t be fighting that guy. You don’t see catchweight handicaps in football, basketball, and hockey. Whatever size you are in those sports is what you compete at. If you’re not big enough to compete then you get whipped. It’s the natural way of things.

It’s unclear what other things got in the way of making the Pacquiao-Cotto rematch, but it likely had to do with things like money and perhaps glove size.



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