By Dan Ambrose: While WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) are both in agreement as far as there being the need for a catch-weight for their November fight, they’re not in agreement to the actual weight for their pay-per-view contest on HBO. Cotto wants the lower catch-weight of 155lbs, whereas Canelo prefers the slightly higher weight of 156lbs, according to ESPN Deportes.
It makes sense for Cotto to make it as low as possible because Canelo rehydrates into the mid-170s, and that’s 20 pounds. For most fighters, it’s really hard on them to take that kind of weight off, but Canelo has been doing it for a while now, and he doesn’t seem to have any problems with yet.
When you’re dehydrating down 20 pounds, it’s a sign that you really need to move up a division or two to get you within 10 pounds of the limit.
In Canelo’s case, he should probably be fighting at super middleweight rather than junior middleweight, because that would mean he’d only have to drain down seven pounds from 175 to get to the 168 pound limit for the super middleweight division. But for some reason, Canelo has been draining down a massive amount of weight to fight smaller junior middleweights and welterweights.
If Cotto can get Canelo to agree to 155, he’ll be better off slightly than he would at 156. It’s still not much of a difference, and it’s possible that Canelo won’t have any problem with the weight because that’s the weight he’s been fighting at lately in his last three fights.
They’ve agreed on Las Vegas, Nevada for the city, according to ESPN Deportes. New York and Texas have been ruled out. It’ll be on either November 7th or November 21st. If it’s on the 7th, then it’ll wind up at the MGM. If it’s on the 21st, it will be at the Thomas & Mack in Vegas. It’s quite possible the fight will wind up on the 21st. That seems to be the date they’re heading for.
Once the fight is signed, there will be a 5-city promotional tour beginning in August, hitting the following five cities: New York, San Antonio, Los Angeles, Puerto Rico and Mexico City. By having it in August, it will enable them to have plenty of time for training to get ready for their fight in November.
With the fight taking place in November, once against Canelo is giving up one of the Mexican holiday dates to Floyd Mayweather Jr., who will be fighting in the Mexican Independence Day holiday weekend on September 12th. Canelo has been talking recently that he wouldn’t give up his Mexican fight date to Mayweather, but that’s exactly what he’ll be doing here.
It’s good thing that the fight will be taking place in November because if Canelo got stubborn and tried to force Cotto to fight on the Mexican holiday, then the fight likely would never get made. Cotto isn’t about to try and compete with a superstar like Mayweather for a Mexican date, because he obviously wouldn’t want to lose money on the pay-per-view buys, and there’s no upside for him to fight on a Mexican holiday because he’s not Mexican, he’s Puerto Rican.
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