Cotto to meet with Roach to make final decision for June 6th fight

By Boxing News - 03/24/2015 - Comments

cotto75By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight belt holder Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) still hasn’t officially named his next opponent for June 6th in New York. Cotto, 34, will be meeting with his trainer Freddie Roach in Los Angeles to make a final decision about who he should face, according to Fightnews.com.

Roach has a say so in who Cotto faces next, and he’ll give his opinion of who it should be. Unfortunately the names that are being mentioned are kind of limited.

These are the names that have mentioned for Cotto’s June 6th fight: 41-year-old junior middleweight Cornelius Bundrage, welterweight Tim Bradley, Jorge Sebastian Heiland and Sergio Mora. Not surprisingly, Gennady Golovkin’s name isn’t among the contestants being mentioned for Cotto’s next fight.

“We have the date of June 6 and we are now evaluating and seeing who the best opponent is for that date,” Cotto said via ESPN Deportes show “A Los Golpes.”
If Roach is going to have the final say for Cotto’s fight, he might not pick out anyone that is a danger to Cotto.

If you look at Cotto’s last two opponents, Sergio Martinez and Delvin Rodriguez, those were safe fights for Cotto. Rodriguez was 39 with a bad right knee and coming off of a long 14 months layoff. Delvin Rodriguez was little more than a tune-up fight, a guy that had been beaten badly by Austin Trout not long before getting the Cotto fight. Presumably, Roach helped pick both of those guys out for Cotto. It’s safe to say that Roach didn’t pick someone dangerous like Golovkin for Cotto to fight.

The fact that Cotto has been stuck in the evaluating mode for quite some time isn’t a good a sign. You have to wonder whether there’s some indecision going on. There’s really no way of getting excited about any of the names that are being talked about for Cotto’s next fight. Bundrage is said to be the leading candidate to get the fight, but he’s not a big name or even close to being a big name.

If Cotto chooses him, he’s going to be putting himself in a situation where his June 6th fight might bring in poor numbers on HBO pay-per-view. Cotto is a PPV fighter now, and he’s not likely to be interested in taking a non-PPV fight. The Cotto-Bundrage just isn’t a PPV worthy fight in the minds of a lot of boxing fans. Cotto vs. Mora isn’t great fight either, and neither is Cotto vs. Heiland. It’ll be difficult to sell either of those fights on HBO PPV.

Cotto vs. Bradley might do decent numbers, but Bradley, 5’6”, is small even for the welterweight division. To ask him to come up to middleweight to fight for the WBC middleweight title, it’s going to make Cotto look like a cherry picker in the eyes of a lot of some fans. When you pick out a tiny fighter that is two divisions below the division you’re fighting in, it gives the appearance that you’re looking for a safe fight.

If Cotto wants to fight someone a division or two below him, he might be better off facing the likes of Keith Thurman, Marcos Maidana, Jermell Charlo, Demetrius Andrade or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Those guys at least can punch, and it would make a far more interested fighting for the boxing fans that are paying to see Cotto’s fight on HBO PPV. Fans want to get value for their money. I’m not sure that Bradley, Heiland or Bundrage would give the fans their money’s worth in a PPV fight.

YouTube video

Cotto recently signed a 3-fight deal with Roc Nation. Given the huge money they gave the 34-year-old, it’s probably not a great deal if Cotto fails to take on the best each time he fights.



Comments are closed.