Cotto-Kirkland: Will fans purchase this on HBO PPV?

By Boxing News - 03/12/2016 - Comments

1-cotto 02By Dan Ambrose: Former four division world champion Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) is in negotiations to fight James Kirkland (32-2, 28 KOs) in two months from now on HBO pay-per-view on June 18 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

It’s hard to imagine that fans would want to pay to see to see a fight between two guys that are coming off of defeats. In the case of Kirkland, he was blown out in 3 rounds by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last year in May 2015. Kirkland has never really been a major player in the sport. He was a prospect before going to prison in 2009.

When Kirkland got out of prison, he was stopped in one round by Nobuhiro Ishida in 2011. All Kirkland’s wins since that time have come against weak opponents.

Before talk of Cotto fighting Kirkland for June 18th, there was talk of Cotto facing Ruslan Provodnikov and Juan Manuel Marquez. Those would be bad choices as well Cotto. Marquez would have been a good choice years ago, but he is 42 now and has not fought in two years. He also has a bad knee. It probably would not even be sporting if Cotto fought him.

A fight between Cotto and Kirkland would make sense if Kirkland was still fighting and winning. That is the whole problem. Kirkland has not fought since his loss to Canelo last year in May. I do not know what Kirkland has been doing all this time, but if he was serious about his career, he should have been back inside the ring a lot time ago. If Cotto ends up fighting Kirkland, it will be like him fighting a retired guy. If Cotto is going to fight Kirkland, then he needs to start combing the retired fighter list and see if he can get some other non-active fighters to face him.

Cotto will be getting sloppy seconds if he faces Kirkland now. Kirkland was alread7 knocked out by Canelo in his last fight. There is nothing for Cotto to gain from fighting Kirkland other than trying to KO him faster than Canelo did.

Beating Kirkland isn’t going to help energize Cotto’s career. It is not going to erase his loss to Canelo. If Cotto is going to keep fighting lesser guys while he waits for a rematch with Canelo, then I don’t think there’s going to be any interest from the boxing public in a second fight between Cotto and Canelo. I think that fight is what Cotto is aiming for. Nevertheless, in order to make it a big fight again, Cotto needs to face dangerous opponent like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Daniel Jacobs, Peter Quillin and Erislandy Lara. If Cotto could fight those people and beat them, he would win over a lot of fans.

I think it’s a bad idea for Cotto to fight Kirkland. It’s not a PPV worthy fight, and I can’t imagine more than a handful of fans purchasing it. I’ll be surprised if HBO agrees to televise it on PPV because it’s not a sell-able fight in my view.



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