Video: Roach wants Cotto vs. Golovkin fight

By Boxing News - 04/26/2017 - Comments

Image: Video: Roach wants Cotto vs. Golovkin fight

By Jeff Aranow: Trainer Freddie Roach wants his inactive fighter Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) to step inside the ring with IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs). Roach says Cotto can beat Golovkin because he’s the better boxer. He says he’ll beat Golovkin just like he beat Saul Canelo Alvarez in 2015. For the record, Canelo beat Cotto but he was given a questionable 12 round decision. A lot of boxing fans thought Cotto deserved the win or the very least a draw against Canelo. The judges spoke, and they gave the ‘W’ to Canelo.

Cotto doesn’t have a fight scheduled right now. Golovkin would be PERFECT for him to fight next. The two of them could make BIG money fighting each other on HBO PPV. The winner of the fight could then fight Canelo on the Mexican holiday in September on HBO PPV. It would be another big money fight with a massive amount of PPV buys. The loser of the Cotto-Golovkin fight would still have great options like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. or Daniel Jacobs.

Whether the fight can happen is up to the soon to be 37-year-old Cotto, who hasn’t seen action since his loss to the much heavier looking Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in November 2015. Cotto is expected to be back inside the ring on June 24 against an opponent still to be determined. Japanese junior middleweight contender Yoshiro Kamegain is a name that has been mentioned as the possible opponent for Cotto on June 24, but could GGG be the one that gets the fight? you never know.

If it’s up to Roach, we could see Cotto testing himself against Golovkin and getting a big money fight well before Canelo, who supposedly wants to face Golovkin in September. We’ve seen how Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions have dragged the Golovkin fight out for well over a year now. Cotto is in the perfect position to snatch the Triple G fight right out from under the nose of Canelo. We’re talking a lot of PPV buys on HBO in a fight between Cotto and Golovkin. He could get that fight in June and then another big fight against Canelo in December. It would be the perfect ending for Cotto’s career with those two huge fights.

“I would love to see that fight, and that would be our last fight together because he told me this is his last year fighting and you know he’s been boxing a long time and wants to spend more time with his family and so forth,” said Roach to Fighthub about Cotto and Golovkin facing each other. ”He’s been pro for like 17 years now, so that would be a great fight for me. I would love that fight.”

Roach is right. Cotto-Golovkin would be a GREAT fight. There would be a ton of interest from the boxing world in that fight. It would be excellent choice for Team Golovkin to take that fight, because they’ve been waiting and waiting for Canelo all this time. They can show that they have other options and they’re just going to sit around on the sidelines while Canelo takes big money fights against an over-matched Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on May 6. A fight like this would probably increase the bargaining power for GGG for a fight against Canelo in September.

We’re talking a lot of PPV buys Cotto-Golovkin would generate. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fight does over 1 million buys. The fight would show Canelo, Golden Boy Promotions and the boxing world that Golovkin really CAN pull in PPV buys when matched against big stars. Canelo has only been able to bring in a lot of buys when matched against Cotto and Floyd Mayweather Jr. The rest of Canelo’s efforts in PPV have been in the 300,000 range. Golovkin vs. Cotto would interest a lot of boxing fans, even though Cotto has been out of the ring for almost 2 solid years since November 2015.

“Jacobs and before. He was slowly slowing down and getting a bit older,” said Roach about Golovkin. “Yeah, he’s my friend, he’s a good guy and all that and I know he’s a good puncher, yes, but the thing is I think I have the better boxer and I think we can beat him like we beat Canelo. And I still say we beat Canelo and I still say Canelo owes us the fight but he won’t fight us. Why? Come on, Canelo. Come to the table.”

Roach needs to work on Cotto to make the Golovkin fight happen. A lot of boxing fans would love to see the two of them fight each other. Golovkin could show Canelo and Golden Boy that he won’t be led around the by nose to try and get that fight against him. Golovkin should have taken the fight with Billy Joe Saunders. That was a mistake on their part to not take the fight, because it gave the appearance to boxing fans that GGG and his promoter Tom Loeffler were following the warning given to them by Oscar De La Hoya that they could mess up the Canelo fight in September if they fought Saunders on June 10. De La Hoya has no room to talk because his fighter Canelo is fighting on May 6.

That’s only 1 month apart from June. They could be the one messing up the Golovkin fight because Canelo could suffer a cut against Chavez Jr. There’s a definite risk for Canelo of getting cut or banged up in that fight more than Golovkin would have gotten against a light puncher like Saunders.

I don’t think Golovkin has slowed down any since last year. He’s still the same fighter. He took some shots in beating Kell Brook. It looked like Golovkin decided to change the way he normally fights for the Danny Jacobs fight by boxing him from the outside instead of going after him to knock him out like he’d always done. I think it was a kneejerk reaction by Golovkin to show the fans that he could box smart against Jacobs without getting hit a lot like he did in the Brook fight.

The thing is, Golovkin was intentionally making it messy against Brook because he wanted to score a knockout and impress his boxing fans. Instead of receiving praise from the fans for doing a good job of taking shots in order to knock Brook out, Golovkin was criticized. So he changed his fighting style for the Jacobs fight to please the fans that said his defense was poor against Brook. By changing his style, Golovkin gave Jacobs the ability to last the whole 12 rounds. It was a mistake by Golovkin. He should have just jumped on Jacobs like he normally does and taken whatever shots he had to in order to knock him out. Golovkin over-thought the fight and changed his normal fighting style for nothing. The boxing fans want to see knockouts from Golovkin. He hasn’t lost anything in one year. What he did wrong against Jacobs was trying to change his normal style to be more defensive. Golovkin shouldn’t have done that. The good news for Golovkin is he can switch right back to his normal fighting style in a fight against Cotto and knock him out quickly like he normally does with his opponents. Golovkin should forget about his defense and focus on punishing his opponents.

YouTube video