With the signing of the proposed mega-fight between Manny Pacquiao and WBO Welterweight Champion, Miguel Cotto imminent, many in the boxing community are scratching their heads over a matchup featuring a natural Junior-Lightweight and a fighter believed to have seen his better days. While promoter Bob Arum works feverishly to finalize a fight featuring two of the more prominent fighters he promotes, several questions hang over the entire affair like a damp mist on an Autumn night in San Francisco.
Firstly, if Manny or his trainer, Freddie Roach, don’t quite feel comfortable taking on legitimate welterweights at the 147 lb. limit, then why do they persist in challenging fighters in the 147 lb. division? The conventional thinking is that if you challenge or “call out” a particular fighter, you do so fully expecting the fight to take place at that fighter’s natural or best fighting weight, not a preconceived or prescribed “catch weight”. The whole notion of fighters requiring catch weights in order to compete favorably is preposterous. Try for a second, to envision Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep or Henry Armstrong requesting that an opponent meet them at an artificial weight, below that opponent’s division weight limit. The boxing public would have ridiculed fighters for even proposing something so ridiculous in eras past.
Secondly, Pacquiao has yet to prove that he can draw fans in droves to his events the way Oscar De La Hoya did and Floyd Mayweather does. Though PPV numbers for Pacquiao fights continue to rise with each fight, it’s highly doubtful that his box office appeal will ever approach the Golden Boy’s. Yet, Arum stubbornly insists that Pacquiao will soon become the biggest name in the sport. That very well could have come to fruition had Manny faced the legitimate challenges that awaited him at 130, 135 and 140 lbs., instead of feasting on a severely-limited David Diaz, a dehydrated and weakened De La Hoya and the previously-exposed Ricky Hatton. Diaz, by the way, could very well have been the worst lightweight champion since Claude Noel, yet Team Pacquiao felt justified in avoiding unified champion, Nate Campbell, rising young star, Juan ‘Baby Bull’ Diaz and formidable former lineal champion, Joel Casamayor. In bypassing these exciting bouts, as well as scraps with the likes of proven performers such as Joan Guzman, Humberto Soto and Edwin Valero, Pacquiao may soon find much of the “feel good” and general high regard he’s earned with boxing fans worldwide, begin to dissipate.
If the proposed Cotto-Pacquiao fight were to come off as expected, it will happen because of tremendous concessions extracted from Cotto’s side. Aside from a deeply-insulting 65/35 purse split in Manny’s favor, Cotto will probably have to weigh in at no more than 145 lbs., his lightest weight since his WBO super-lightweight title defense victory over Paulie Malinaggi in 2006. It’s no secret that Cotto began campaigning in the welterweight division due to the extreme difficulty he had making weight at 140 lbs., difficulty that led to several uneven performances at that weight. In requiring that Cotto way no more than 145 lbs. for their tentatively-scheduled November 14th showdown, Team Pacquiao is basically admitting that they’d rather emerge victorious over a Cotto in a weakened state than possibly lose to one near his best.
But before we assail Arum and Roach, it should be understood that boxing is as much big business as sport, and the promoter and manager are merely looking out for the best interests of their primary money-maker, as well as their own. Don King did it for years, but it’s very hard to recall King ever working catch weight clauses or stipulations into fight negotiations. The cigar-smoking King was guilty of many things during his promotional career, many of them unsavory, but he never entertained the notion that a fighter enter a fight at anything less or more than his optimal weight. It’s possible that Arum is feeling a bit of heat after seeing two of his most marketable fighters, Cotto and Kelly Pavlik, fall like sacks of potatoes in the second half of 2008. Not long ago, each fighter was where Pacquiao is now, before resounding defeats to Antonio Margarito and Bernard Hopkins, respectively, dampened immediate prospects for big-money bonanzas involving Pavlik and Cotto.
This concept of catch weights is one that is sure to catch on as promoters endeavor to “load the dice” in favor of their “cash cows”. Back in the early 1980s, manager Mike Trainer insisted upon a catch weight of 156-157 lbs. if a fight between his fighter, Sugar Ray Leonard and middleweight champion, ‘Marvelous’ Marvin Hagler were to take place. Hagler and his management team scoffed at the time, and the fight never materialized, due to a serious eye injury suffered by Leonard. Hagler-Leonard took place a few years later, with Hagler’s team making several major concessions, weight not being one of them.
Cotto is coming off a tough, grinding decision win over former IBF Welterweight Champion, Joshua Clottey. After sitting at ringside and witnessing Cotto struggle that night, it’s mystifying why Manny or Roach would feel that a weight stipulation is necessary in order to defeat a Cotto who has been involved in many wars, at 140 and 147 lbs., and whose tires are starting to lose their “tread”. It obviously speaks to the idea that Manny is no longer a fighter, but is now a “global phenomenon” or commodity, and in order to protect that commodity for future “dividend yields”, risk must be minimized, even at the expense of perception.
The idea of one fighter challenging or “calling out” another is based upon doing so at the challenged fighter’s optimal weight. Otherwise, why bother calling out another fighter, since a victory over a weakened or otherwise compromised adversary will always be perceived as “tainted” in the minds of boxing historians and fans. If Pacquiao-Cotto does indeed take place later this year, it’s likely that Cotto will enter the ring at less than peak fighting condition, and this will be thanks to the catch weight clause in the fight contract forced upon Cotto by Team Pacquiao and Arum.
If serious boxing fans were polled, it’s more than likely that over 70% of them would rather see Pacquiao and Cotto tangle at the welterweight limit, rather than the artificial catch weight insisted upon by Pacquiao and Roach. After all, if Manny really is boxing’s Pound-for-Pound king, he’d prove it by fighting the best at their best. And the requirement that prospective opponents enter the ring at anything other than their best will serve only to diminish the accomplishments of the great warrior from General Santos City in the Philippines.
If anyone at all were looking out for the best interests of Miguel Angel Cotto, this fight would take place at 147 lbs. or not at all!
