Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions has high hopes for the proposed pay-per-view fight next year between Golden Boy’s flagship fighter former WBA/WBC junior middleweight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) and WBC 160lb champ Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) on HBO. De La Hoya is projecting that this fight will bring in close to 2 million pay-per-view buys.
This is a huge number when you look at the fact that the recent pay-per-view fights for both guys have been around 300,000. De La Hoya is assuming that when you get Cotto and Canelo together, it’ll bring a much bigger number than when they’re facing other opposition.
“Like every fan out there, I’m waiting patiently,” De La Hoya said to USAtoday.com about the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao fight. “But my patience is starting to run out and now I’m smiling over Cotto-Canelo, which I know can fill that void.”
The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is probably a lost cause, because Mayweather doesn’t seem eager to do business with Bob Arum. That could change in the future now that Mayweather is down to his last two fights of his career, and he very few options unless he wants to fight guys that bring in fewer PPV buys.
If Mayweather wants to end his career with the biggest possible money then he’s going to need to look to fight Pacquiao and perhaps Canelo again to maximize the amount of money he can make with those last two fights.
“When Cotto-Canelo gets made, I see no reason why it can’t come close to the two million mark in pay-per-view buys,” De La Hoya said. “Yes, you have to give credit to Miguel Cotto, he’s a great fighter. But you bring in the Canelo factor and it brings pay-per-view fights to a whole new level.”
2 million PPV buys for Cotto-Canelo? I think De La Hoya is dreaming big time. At best, Cotto-Canelo will be lucky if it hits 900,000 buys, but I think it’s going to go far below that number. Canelo still hasn’t redeemed himself from his loss to Mayweather from last year. Since that fight, Canelo beat a very, very slow Alfredo Angulo, who was coming off of a knockout loss at the time Canelo fought him. Canelo’s other win came against Erislandy Lara in a fight that many boxing fans thought Canelo lost.
Instead of wanting to clear up the controversy the way that boxing stars like to do, Canelo is going in the opposite direction in facing 37-year-old Joshua Clottey in a fight that few boxing fans are excited about. Canelo would have been better off fighting Lara again than picking Clottey.
Obviously Golden Boy and Canelo are counting on the casual boxing fans to remember Clottey from his fight against Manny Pacquiao from 4 years ago, and want to see Canelo fight him as well. I think Golden Boy is making a mistake though, because the casual fans that do remember Clottey from the Pacquiao fight, they remember how horrible Clottey was in losing that fight. The fans are going to want to know why Canelo is fighting a guy as old, and as inactive as Clottey in his first fight after a controversial win over Lara.
