By Rob Smith: Richard Schaefer, the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, isn’t going to let Miguel Cotto’s 12 round decision loss to WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout from last Saturday night get in the way of a potential pay per view bout between Cotto and WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Schaefer still wants to make the Cotto-Alvarez fight despite Cotto losing.
Schaefer said after the fight “There’s still a possibility we’ll see Canelo-Cotto fight.”
This doesn’t sit too well with Trout, who said “You’d think that he’d [Alvarez] be ready to fight me because I beat Miguel Cotto…I beat his brother [Rigoberto Alvarez]…He should want to fight me…There’s nothing left for him to do, besides fight a real junior middleweight, to get another belt. But that’s my thinking. Not everyone thinks like me apparently.”
Alvarez really wants the Cotto fight, and that was one of the three names that he insisted on Golden Boy Promotions getting for him for his next fight on May 4th. Cotto is the only one that Golden Boy can possibly get because Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Sergio Martinez, Alvarez’s other two choices, aren’t breaking down Golden Boy’s door to try and get the fight with Alvarez.
Alvarez wants to become a huge PPV star in the class as Mayweather and Pacquiao. For him to get to that level he’s got to beat someone like Cotto to make a name for himself. Right now, Alvarez is popular in the Mexican community, but he’s still not really faced any tough tests. Many of his opponents have been 2nd tier quality fighters, and since he moved up to junior middleweight in 2010, Alvarez has been fighting a lot of welterweights and in one case a light welterweight. He’s faced a lot of older fighters in their 40s, such as Carlos Baldomir, Shane Mosley and Lovemore N’dou. This is why Alvarez really needs to face someone like Cotto so he can make that jump to PPV fights.
The criticism that Alvarez is getting from boxing fans is that he’s only 22, and he’s not paid his paid his dues by looking to fight the top junior middleweights like Erislandy Lara and Vanes Martirosyan. Of course, Cotto is a top junior middleweight, and that would give Alvarez a chance to show his ability if he were able to get the fight and beat him. However, Cotto just to Trout and it may seem kind of off putting if Alvarez were to look to fight him instead of Trout. That would give some boxing fans the impression that Alvarez is just looking to get the money and not fighting to try and be the best.