By Sean Jones: Former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux wants to fight Miguel Cotto next in a war. Golden Boy Promotions are said to be interested in putting Cotto in with Lemieux in December. That’s a fight that they’re interested in making. However, Cotto (41-5, 33 KOs) wants to face the winner of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin fight if possible. It’s good to aim high, but Cotto might have to settle for fighting Lemieux.
”Miguel Cotto, let’s get this fight for the fans,” said Lemieux on his social media site. ”Be ready for war.”
Can Cotto handle the punching power, youth and size of Lemiuex? This a tough fight for a small guy like Cotto to take at this point in his career. Cotto won’t be able to get away with the things he was doing against the limited Yoshihiro Kamegai in their fight last Saturday night. Lemieux is another class of fighter. This fight could end badly for the WBO junior middleweight champion Cotto. Lemieux is in his prime, and he hits harder than anyone that Cotto has fought before. Canelo is a good puncher, but he’s not in the same league as Lemieux. He’s naturally strong. He doesn’t have to bulk up in muscle to be powerful. Lemieux would be a grave threat to Cotto for the entire fight. Cotto would never be able to relax for an instant against Lemieux. If Cotto can take a lot of hard head shots, he might win, but his face is going to likely be very swollen up by the end of the fight. Lemieux hits harder than Antonio Margarito did during his prime, and Cotto was stopped by him in the 11th round in 2008.
If Cotto rejects Golden Boy’s offer of letting him fight Lemieux in December, he could be stuck with having to fight another Kamegai level fighter. It’s doubtful HBO will agree to let Cotto fight on PPV if he’s going to select another limited guy. Lemieux is a good enough fighter for Cotto to fight on HBO. There aren’t too many other fighters that have the name value for Cotto to fight on PPV. He wants his fight to be shown on HBO PPV in December.
Lemieux will likely need to make some sacrifices as far as weight for him to have a chance of fighting Cotto. You can count on Cotto using his A-side pull to ask for a catch-weigh of 155 or 156 for a fight with Lemieux. It’s hard to predict how low Cotto would want Lemieux to drop down in weight before the fight could get made. 155 would be a fair guess. Lemieux would likely need to take off 5 extra pound o get down to 155. Cotto isn’t a middleweight, and you can use that as justification to ask Lemieux to come down to 155. But by the same token, Lemieux isn’t a junior middleweight, and it would be a tremendous hardship for him to get down to 155. That would be the whole idea behind getting Lemieux to come down in weight. He would be weakened potentially with the weight loss, and Cotto could then take advantage of that to possibly in the fight.
Cotto appears to be looking for a big cash out fight to end his career by fighting Canelo or GGG. If neither of those fighters is available for him to fight in December, then he’s going to have to decide about whether to face Lemieux or maybe wait until next year for Canelo or Triple G to get freed up.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler seemed slightly interested when asked this week whether he would be willing to make a fight between Golovkin and Cotto in December. Loeffler says there could be a rematch against Canelo at that time or a unification match against WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. Canelo can make more money fighting Golovkin in a rematch in December than he can in facing Cotto, who was out of the ring for close to 2 years before finally fighting last Saturday night against Yoshihiro Kamegai at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. Cotto looked very good in defeating Kamegai by a 12 round unanimous decision to win the vacant WBO junior middleweight title.
Golden Boy can’t promise Cotto a fight against the winner of the Canelo-Golovkin fight without hurting themselves in the process, as there will be huge interest in a rematch between Canelo and Triple G. This isn’t a knock on Cotto. The fans will want to see Canelo and Golovkin again. It’s always smart for the promotional companies to strike while the iron is hot by putting rematches together quickly rather than stringing them out over an extended period of time. Cotto is a good option for Canelo or Golovkin, but only after Canelo faces Golovkin a second time. It would be good if Coitto was willing to wait until next year to face the winner of the Canelo-Golovkin fight instead of trying to get the winner to get back into the ring and fight him in December.