Cotto-Canelo possible for November 21st, says Peñagarícano

By Boxing News - 06/30/2015 - Comments

1-cotto (7)By Dan Ambrose: Gabriel Peñagarícano, the adviser for WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs), says they’re making a lot of progress in the negotiations with former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) for their mega-fight on HBO pay-per-view.

Peñagarícano says they’re looking at November 21st as a possible date for the fight, and they’ve narrowed the cities down to Las Vegas, Nevada or New York. Las Vegas is the No.1 choice right now with New York No.2. Dallas, Texas is also a possibility. They’re hoping to announce the fight in July once they have the signatures on the contracts.

With no other big fights on the horizon, Cotto-Canelo could bring in huge pay-per-view numbers for this event. There’s Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fight on September 12th on Showtime pay-per-view, but other than that, there isn’t anything big in the last quarter of 2015. This means a lot of boxing fans will have money to spare to purchase the Cotto vs. Canelo fight on PPV. The only thing they need is to market it well, and hopefully put together a decent undercard for the fight to make it more interesting.

“There are a lot of movement in every way,” said Cotto’s adviser Peñagarícano to ESPN Desportes. “Where will the fight be? It’s something that we have not determined. On November 21, it is a possibility. But neither is entirely definite. The date will be linked to the place. As I said before New York and Las Vegas are viable. This is a big business.”

They’re looking at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York as a possibility for the fight if it gets staged there. Cotto brought in a huge crowd at the Barclays Center for his mismatch against Daniel Geale on June 6th. Madison Square Garden is another venue in New York that they’re looking at.

In Las Vegas, the MGM Grand is in the lead at the top spot for the fight. With a capacity of 16,800 seats. It’s a great venue and in the perfect spot with gambling in area for fans and visitors to Vegas.

“Well, we should not dismiss to Dallas. We have to see what they have,” Peñagarícano said. “The announcement could be in July.”

This will be the 34-year-old Cotto’s second fight with his promoters Roc Nation Sports. It’ll give them much more value than Cotto’s dreadful fight against Geale earlier this month. This wasn’t even a fight. Cotto selected a fighter who’d been knocked out in three rounds just last year by Gennady Golovkin, the WBA middleweight champion. It’s unfortunate that Geale was selected there were far better options for Cotto than him. At least it would have given the chance of showing that he’s for real as the WBC middleweight champion if he selected someone like Golovkin or Tureano Johnson to fight in his first defense of his WBC title rather than Geale.

The winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight will need to make a quick decision whether to hold onto the WBC 160lb title or not, because if they do intend on keeping it, they’ll need to make their next fight against Golovkin, the #1 WBC mandatory challenger. If they vacate the WBC title, they’ll look like they’re ducking Golovkin and this will make them look like they’re not legitimate. It’s obviously an advantage for Canelo to keep his status as a junior middleweight because he can fight both welterweights and junior middleweights and enjoy a huge weight advantage over them.

The weight for the Cotto vs. Canelo fight is still being determined. It’s going to be a catch-weight, but they’re still not certain what weight would be best. 156 to 157lbs are two of the numbers they’re looking at. This will work better for Canelo, who rehydrates into the mid-170s for his fights against junior middleweights. At this point in his career, Canelo is basically a short middleweight who is insisting at keeping the junior middleweight label for whatever reason.



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