Miguel Cotto vs. Sadam Ali – Official weights

By Boxing News - 12/01/2017 - Comments

Image: Miguel Cotto vs. Sadam Ali - Official weights

By Dan Ambrose: Miguel Cotto (41-5, 33 KOs) weighed in at a surprisingly low 151.6 pounds on Friday for his defense of hi WBO junior middleweight title against #9 WBO Sadam Ali (25-1, 14 KOs) at Madison Square Garden in New York. Ali weighed in at 153 pounds.

(Photos Courtesy HBO/Ed Mulholland)

Sadam Ali, 29, is not a well-known fighter, but his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions are hoping to help him make a name for himself by giving him this fight. It’s a great opportunity for Ali, but he’s going to need to show some talent and get Cotto’s respect early on. If Ali can’t make Cotto wary of his shots, he’s going to run him over like a freight train.

Cotto-Ali has gotten the attention from the boxing media due to the heavy promotion about it being the last fight of Cotto’s career. But other than that, it’s a fight that has not attracted a lot of talk. The Cotto vs. Ali fight is viewed as a mismatch, and a going away present for Cotto to make sure he doesn’t lose the fight.

HBO agreed to televise the Cotto-Ali fight, even though it’s a poor match-up on paper. For anyone that saw how EASILY Jessie Vargas beat Sadam Ali last year, they have to be more than a little disturbed by Cotto picking Ali as his last opponent of his career. It’s more of a fight that you would expect to see on an undercard on free television rather than in a main event on HBO. The network is giving Cotto a gift by televising his glorified mismatch against Ali after they televised his previous mismatch against Yoshihiro Kamegai last August. Ali is just as over-matched as Kamegai was.

Golden Boy Promotions probably could have gotten WBC junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo to take the fight with Cotto if they’d offered it to him. Charlo made mention of being willing to take the fight. It would have been a bold way for Cotto to end his career by fighting the 27-year-old Cotto instead of the recently knocked out Sadam Ali. The one negative about Cotto fighting Charlo is he’d likely end his career in a bad note by getting knocked out by the unbeaten WBC champion. By picking Ali, Cotto increases his chances of retiring with a knockout victory. The casual boxing fans may never have heard of Sadam Ali before, but some of them will be happy to see Cotto retire with a win instead of a bad KO loss to Charlo.

HBO Boxing will be televising the doubleheader start at 10pm ET/PT. In the co-feature, undefeated WBC super bantamweight champion Rey Vargas (30-0, 22 KOs) weighed in at 121 ¼ pounds for his voluntary title defense against unbeaten #10 WBC Oscar Negrete (17-0, 7 KOs). The 5’5” Negrete weighed in at 121 ¾ pounds.

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