By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto’s February 25th fight against James Kirkland (32-2, 28 KOs) to be officially announce this Monday, December 19 for their 153 pound catchweight fight on HBO pay-per-view at the Ford Center at The Star Frisco, Texas. There’s a great deal of criticism the Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) vs. Kirkland fight is already receiving from boxing fans, because many of them see it as poor fight for Cotto.
The tickets for the Cotto-Kirkland fight go on sale this Thursday on 12/22. The tickets can be purchased at Ticketmaster.com. This is going to be a tough sale to get the boxing public interested in paying to see the fight on HBO PPV.
It would help if Kirkland and Cotto both hadn’t been inactive since both losing to Saul Canelo Alvarez. Cotto is still popular, but his fans are mostly on the East Coast and in Florida. Having the Cotto-Kirkland fight take place in Texas will mean that it will require that Kirkland bring in the boxing fans. Kirkland is from Texas, but he’s been so inactive. It’s debatable whether Kirkland can draw a large crowd at this point in his stalled career.
Kirkland, 32, has not been a factor in the sport for a lot of years, and he hasn’t won a fight in three years since 2013. Choosing to fight Kirkland on HBO PPV is a peculiar move for Cotto. If Cotto wanted an easy fight, he should have chosen welterweight Tim Bradley, Kell Brook or Amir Khan for tune-up purposes. It’s possible that Cotto could look to fight a rematch against Saul Canelo Alvarez in 2017.
Golden Boy Promotions would almost surely agree to match Canelo against Cotto in a rematch. The two fighters fought in November 2015 with Canelo winning a 12 round decision. The fight brought in 900,000 buys on HBO PPV. The problem that Cotto has is he hasn’t fought since the loss to Canelo. Cotto has stayed out of the ring all this time. There was talk of Cotto being interested in 43-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez, but that fight failed to take place due to Marquez not agreeing with Cotto on the weight for the fight.
Kirkland will be teamed with his old trainer Ann Wolfe to get ready for the Cotto fight. However, Kirkland’s inactivity over the last 7 years is likely too much for him to overcome. It probably doesn’t matter who trains Kirkland at this point. He’s been too inactive for too many years for him to get back to the level he was at in 2009. Kirkland had a lot of potential years ago, but he’s failed to take advantage of that potential.
The Cotto vs. Kirkland fight doesn’t seem to have much of a point. It’s unclear whose idea it was for Cotto to fight Kirkland. Was that Cotto’s promoter at Roc Nation’s idea or his? Perhaps they know something that the boxing public doesn’t know about the casual fans interest in such a match. It doesn’t look like it was well thought out for Cotto to fight Kirkland.
Even Golden Boy’s decision last year to match Canelo Alvarez against Kirkland seemed like a poor decision based on them miscalculating the boxing public’s interest in seeing Canelo fight Kirkland. It would have been a good idea to match Canelo against Kirkland back in 2011 after he restarted his career following a jail term, but not in 2015. By that point, it was arguably way too late to match Canelo against Kirkland. He’d already been knocked out by Ishida and he’s done very little in the four previous years of his career.
With Cotto set to end his 16-year pro career in 2017, he’s not exactly going out with a bang in choosing Kirkland as his opponent for his next fight. This isn’t Cotto’s last fight of his career, but it’s still very disappointing that he’s chosen Kirkland as his opponent for a PPV fight. This is viewed as a money grab by a lot of boxing fans. They don’t see the fight as being worthwhile for PPV, and they fail to understand why Cotto is fighting someone who was knocked out in the 3rd round in his last fight against Canelo in May 2015.
Kirkland was also knocked out by the light hitting Nobuhiro Ishida in the 1st round in 2011. Ishida knocked Kirkland down three times in that fight. Kirkland came back to win his next five fights before losing to Canelo last year. One of Kirkland’s wins from 2011 to 2013 came against Alfredo Angulo in 2011. That victory was seen as big deal. Unfortunately, Angulo’s career has not panned out, and Kirkland’s win over him now seems even less important.
Kirkland was losing his fight against Carlos Molina in 2012, when the referee stopped the fight in the 10th round and disqualified Molina after his corner came into the ring to put the stool down after he’d been knocked down by Kirkland and had gotten back up. The round had ended, and Molina’s corner felt that it was OK to enter the ring. However, the referee opted to disqualify Molina for that. It was a controversial thing. It might have saved Kirkland from another loss though, because he was trailing on the scorecards 88-83, 87-84 and 85-85. Molina is no longer one of the highly rated contenders in the 154lb division. There are now a lot more talented fighters at 154 like the Charlo brothers, Julian Williams, Erislandy Lara and Demetrius Andrade at the top.
If Cotto loses to Kirkland, then he can pretty much forget about a rematch against Canelo. You never know though. With the way Golden Boy has been matching Canelo lately, they might still choose to put him back in with Cotto again regardless if he loses to Kirkland. They would be counting on the casual boxing fans not following the sport closely enough to know about Cotto losing to Kirkland.