Well, this author was wrong. I thought it would be rising Mexican star and WBC Junior Middleweight Champion Saul ?Canelo? Alverez and not Puerto Rican icon and current WBA Junior Middleweight Champion Miguel Cotto (37-2 with 30 KO?s) who would get the opportunity to face Ring magazine?s number two pound for pound boxer (and this author?s number one) WBC Welterweight Champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0 with 26 KO?s) on Cinco De Mayo for an almost guaranteed career high payday. It?s almost a given that anyone who faces either Manny Pacquiao or Mayweather will earn the most they have ever earned in their career.
Cotto was smart to remain a free agent when his contract with Top Rank expired, rather than be mired and confined to a situation devoid of freedom to face fighters who are not under Arum?s reign. He now gets to be involved in another super fight and will compete at a comfortable weight as opposed to draining himself to make a weight between 147 and 150lbs. The big question of course is whether this fight is happening 5 years too late. I have said more than once now that Floyd is a master of timing both in and out of the ring. The public was clamoring for a Mayweather/Cotto fight back in 2007 when Cotto was an undefeated dynamo who appeared to be Floyd?s biggest threat at the time. Floyd ended up ?retiring? rather than facing Cotto, Paul Williams, or Antonio Margarito.
Floyd doesn?t sign to face anyone who he doesn?t feel 100% sure he will defeat, and that is why he will be facing Miguel Cotto and not Manny Pacquiao in May. I can hear the Floyd fanatics right now screaming ?Floyd had no choice, Arum wanted the fight to be in late May/early June. Pacquiao is ducking him, not the other way around! He called Manny out on Twitter?. There is no doubt that Arum doesn?t want Mayweather to fight Pacquiao right now any more than Floyd does. I?m sure Arum is thrilled that he will get to milk the cash cow one more time before possibly throwing him in with Mayweather in November. I do believe, however, that if Floyd REALLY wanted to face Pacquiao right now he would not have unreasonably priced himself out of the fight and demanded more than 50% of the split. Who knows if that fight will ever happen, but for now we will have Mayweather/Cotto on May 5th and what appears to be Pacquiao/Bradley on June 9th which is a very dangerous fight for Manny.
Miguel looked exceptionally good in his last fight stopping Margarito and showed that even at an advanced stage of his career he is capable of adding some new wrinkles to his game. We had not seen Cotto smother and clinch an opponent on the inside in order to both preclude him from landing uppercuts and body shots as well as getting a much needed breather after perpetual lateral movement. It will be interesting to see what his game plan will be against a masterful boxer like Floyd.
One thing is for sure, Mayweather will be a lot more difficult to hit than Margarito was. There will be no injured eye to zero in on, no slow moving punching bag to pummel, no giant, stationary head to aim for. Floyd will prove to be a much more elusive target. I get the feeling that Cotto might find hitting the Puerto Rican lottery to be easier than hitting Floyd, but at least he won the Mayweather sweepstakes.
