Cotto-Pacquiao II: How do you sell this fight to the public?

By Boxing News - 01/21/2012 - Comments

Image: Cotto-Pacquiao II: How do you sell this fight to the public?By Dan Ambrose: It’s looking like Miguel Cotto will be the fighter that gets picked for Manny Pacquiao’s next fight, according to RingTV. News is out that the fight will be finalized by Monday of next week and it looks as if it’s going to go ahead.

Cotto and Pacquiao fought in 2009 in not a very close fight. I’m being kind here to Cotto and his fans. Actually, Cotto looked as bad as any of Pacquiao’s recent mismatched opponents have looked.

It was great matchmaking by Bob Arum in choosing Cotto after he had been pounded and likely softened up by Antonio Margarito in a 11th round TKO beating. Cotto was further softened up for Pacquiao by a 145 pound catchweight that Pacquiao’s team insisted was needed for Pacquiao. The end of the story was that Cotto got beaten badly and never did much other than take punches.

What can Arum do to sell on paper what seems to be a terrible mismatch? Arum’s previous mismatches for Pacquiao have involved him fighting guys that he’s not beaten before. The Juan Manuel Marquez was the one exception, but they waited until he was 38 before they fought him again after the poor showing against him in 2008.

The bottom line is that Pacquiao and Cotto will make money no matter what. Even if the fight brings in only 600,000 PPV buys, it will still make money for all those involved. However, how does Arum sell the fight? What kind of angle can you approach the rematch when the first fight was so one-sided? This is kind of a rarity in boxing.

When one guy is badly beaten the way that Cotto was against Pacquiao, the promoters don’t try and match them again unless there was some kind of rematch clause. There’s no demand for this to take place among boxing fans and it seems like nothing more than a money grab by Arum to take advantage of the large fan base that Cotto has going for him.



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