By Dan Ambrose: Former three division world champion Miguel Cotto (38-4, 31 KO’s) will be joining his trainer Freddie Roach to start training on April 14th for his June 7th fight with WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-2, 28 KO’s) at Madison Square Garden, in New York. ESPN Deportes is reported that the fight negotiations between Cotto and Martinez are almost completed.
Cotto wants to try and capture a 4th division world title, and that’s why he’s moving up to 160 to try and take the 38-year-old Sergio’s belt. Cotto is getting the Martinez fight at the right time with him coming off of a year-long layoff after his last fight in April against Martin Murray. Martinez suffered a couple of injuries in that bout, and he’s been slowly healing all this time. One would hope that Sergio doesn’t suffer an injury during training or during the course of the fight because that could make things difficult for him.
Cotto and Roach believe that he’s turned things around with his recent win over Delvin Rodriguez from last October. The defeat ended a 2-fight losing streak for Cotto, and he definitely looked a lot better in that fight than he did in losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Austin Trout in back to back fights. However, as good as Cotto looked in that fight, it’s difficult to know for certain whether it was because he had actually improved with Roach’s help or if it was a case of him fighting a weaker opponent that was tailor-made for his style. You have to remember that Delvin Rodriguez had also been easily beaten by Trout only a year before, so what Cotto accomplished in beating him really wasn’t much of a big deal.
A lot of fans are wondering why Cotto selected the aging Sergio Martinez to fight next on June 7th instead of the best middleweight in the division in Gennady Golovkin. Cotto wants to win another world title, but by facing Sergio at this point in his career, it gives some fans the impression that Cotto wants a paper title instead of the real one against Golovkin. It’s hard to say what’s going through Cotto’s mind for his choice of fighting Sergio instead of Golovkin, but I do think that Cotto would have absolutely no chance in a fight with Golovkin. None. But against Sergio, Cotto has a chance if he suffers another broken hand or if he tears up a knee again. Cotto can beat an injured Sergio, but I don’t give him much of any chance against a healthy Sergio.
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