Miguel Cotto Has Every Right to Be Picky, but Canelo Alvarez Is His Only Option
Miguel Cotto, the seven-time world champion who became Puerto Rico's first four-division titlist in June, has earned the right to be a little picky.
The 34-year-old is widely expected to take on Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez on May 2—coinciding with Cinco de Mayo weekend—but the cinnamon-haired heartthrob recently took to the court of public opinion to express frustration at the slow pace of negotiations.
Chill out, Canelo.
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Cotto has earned the right to take his time, but you're still the only logical choice.
Canelo, per comments to Spanish-speaking media obtained by Lem Satterfield of The Ring Magazine, had this to say on January 1:
"I don’t understand what’s happening. I already granted Miguel Cotto a lot of things to make this fight happen. It’s been more than a month, and Miguel Cotto hasn’t signed the contract
A Puerto Rican never ducked a Mexican fighter. Nor did a Mexican ever duck a Puerto Rican fighter. This is a classic fight for the fans.
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It’s been nearly a month since Canelo’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, announced that his protege had put ink to paper on the terms of a bout with Cotto, but the Puerto Rican champion’s camp has consistently maintained that it is weighing its options.
Those options are believed to include not just Canelo but also a potentially lucrative rematch with pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather and former welterweight titlist Timothy Bradley.
Gennady Golovkin is also on that list, but Cotto’s legal adviser, Gaby Penagaricano, squashed that fight, at least for the time being, per Satterfield: "Certainly with Canelo and with Floyd, those two are there and those are a lot bigger than a fight with Golovkin. So as long as those two are there, then I think that Golovkin is a conversation for the near future and not for right now."
Fair enough, but then the only other fight on that list that makes any sort of sense if you're going to steer clear of Canelo is Mayweather.
No disrespect to Bradley, but he's not more credible than Golovkin. Even though Desert Storm got robbed of a clear win against Diego Chaves last month, he's a small welterweight who would need to move up.
Mayweather called Cotto the "toughest guy I ever fought" in the ring after taking a clear but competitive unanimous decision in a junior middleweight title fight in 2012.
Internet rumors flew—don't they always?—that Mayweather's manager, Al Haymon, had offered Cotto upward of $40 million for a rematch, but Penagaricano dismissed them as just that—rumors and nothing more.
Add to the Mayweather issue the fact that Cotto is promoted by Bob Arum's Top Rank, which has long had a contentious relationship with Mayweather and Haymon, and you find yourself once again in boxing's political rabbit hole, which has destroyed many a good fight idea.
That leaves us with Canelo.
Cotto's biggest sticking point, if you believe his team, comes down to what it always comes down to in boxing: money.
It makes the world go round, and it unmakes so many good fights.
But not this time, or so we hope.
Cotto vs. Canelo for the middleweight championship in Las Vegas or New York or Arlington or wherever the heck you decide to touch down is easily one of the biggest fights in the sport.
Only Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao would be bigger, but that one, as it always has, suffers from the types of promotional, financial and egotistical hurdles that induce head-banging-against-the-wall migraines for fans.
Cotto vs. Canelo not only can happen, but it should happen.
It wasn't long ago that Cotto was virtually left for dead after losing a lopsided decision to then-WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout at Madison Square Garden.
The image of Cotto, one of boxing’s proudest and gutsiest warriors, standing there at the podium at MSG, his face a swollen, reddened mask, answering question after question about whether he planned to ever fight again seems like a distant memory now.
He rested, recharged and brought in Freddie Roach—who once upon a time trained Pacquiao to smash Cotto's face in lopsided fight—to revitalize him in the gym and in the ring.
Score one for Freddie.
Two fights later, and Cotto is not only back in the game, but he's also the lineal middleweight champion and the guy everyone wants to fight.
Canelo is a superstar in his own right.
He's suffered few ill effects from dropping a wide unanimous decision of his own to Mayweather in 2013, instead electing to engage in a full-frontal assault on his former foe's pay-per-view dominance of Mexican holiday weekends.
Cotto clearly wants to be the A-side of this promotion—he's the champ and a future Hall of Famer—and get paid like it, but Canelo is right there with him in terms of recent drawing power.
Alvarez's two bouts on PPV last year, against Alfredo Angulo and Erislandy Lara, both came in around the range of 300,000-350,000 buys.
They weren't title fights, nor were they particularly PPV-worthy, but they equaled the number done by Cotto’s historic challenge of and victory over Sergio Martinez in June.
And that's to make no mention of how many of the 2.2 million homes that purchased Mayweather vs. Canelo did so to cheer on the man advertised as the pound-for-pound king’s toughest challenge ever.
Canelo is clearly box-office gold waiting to happen, and combining that promotional might with Cotto’s ability to drum up interest among rabid Puerto Rican fans is sure to make everyone—principally, the fighters—a whole bunch of money.
Mexico vs. Puerto Rico always draws.
Always.
And it’s been too long since we’ve had such a compelling entry in that historic record book.
Cinco de Mayo weekend?
You can just picture the Ocean's Eleven crew walking out of the casino with huge duffel bags full of $100 bills. They’ll practically be printing the money.
Not sold yet on why this fight makes the most sense for Cotto?
OK. Try this one on for size.
Cotto can beat Canelo.
Whether or not he will is up to the boxing gods who make such decisions, but you’d definitely say he has a better chance against Alvarez than against Mayweather, right?
Or Golovkin?
Roach seemed to concur with that assessment, at least the part about beating Canelo, touching on another important point, per Ryan Songalia of RingTV:
"I think Canelo Alvarez is obviously our number-one choice, and then I would love to go fight Triple G [Golovkin] after we win that fight. Of course there’s Mayweather out there, he’s ducking Manny but he beat Cotto once and I don’t know if he wants to fight us but that’s a pretty interesting fight for me.
Cotto told me after our first fight together ‘If I was in this kind of shape when I fought Mayweather I would’ve knocked him out.’ I like his confidence there
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The stars are perfectly aligned, aren’t they?
Cotto-Canelo is a 50-50 fight.
You can’t say that about Mayweather or even Golovkin.
Win that one, and those fights will still be there, and they’ll be even more significant and more lucrative.
And isn’t that what it’s all about in the end?
Well, that and legacy.
Cotto doesn’t have anything left to prove, but when you can fatten your wallet, beat a young up-and-coming lion in his prime and score a notch for your country in a historic rivalry, why say no?
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