Floyd Mayweather Jr could slide in and snatch Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s hoped for mega-fight against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto on May 2nd. Cotto’s adviser Gaby Peñagarícano is saying that Mayweather is a potential option for Cotto. Mayweather’s adviser Al Haymon has allegedly offered Cotto $40 million to take the Mayweather fight.
This offer hasn’t been confirmed by Mayweather or Peñagarícano though. It would obviously be tough for Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions to match an offer of this kind if it turns out to be true.
One of the sticking points in the Cotto-Canelo negotiations is the economics. It’s a fight that has to make sense in terms of the money that Cotto is going to get for the fight, and it doesn’t seem that has been ironed out yet.
“The reality is that no agreement is there yet. None. For any fight,” said Peñagarícano to thesportspress.com. “We are in talks, but announcing that we’ve reached an agreement for that fight is not true. And a fight with Mayweather has certainly not been ruled out. We need to first see what will happen (Mayweather-Pacquiao) and if it’s not happening as I believe, it (Mayweather-Cotto) could be a possibility.”
Mayweather vs. Cotto would be an excellent fight for a lot of boxing fans. However, there are some fans who feel that it would be a repeat of their first fight two years ago in 2012 where Mayweather out-boxed the flat-footed Cotto. Mayweather has the advantage of being able to move around the ring to avoid the 5’7” Cotto’s shots.
With Canelo, he doesn’t move very well and he tends to come straight at his opponents looking to KO them. It would be more of a 50-50 fight in the eyes of boxing fans, because Canelo doesn’t have the mobility to avoid Cotto’s power shots the way Mayweather would.
Mayweather doesn’t want to be bumped off his May 2nd fight date, and you can understand why he would be interested in facing Cotto if he can’t get a fight against Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather would love to get a fight against Pacquiao, as he said in a recent interview with Showtime.
Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum seems intent on leaving the May 2nd date for the Cotto-Canelo fight, even though it’s a fight that won’t make nearly the same kind of money as a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight would. It would be a big deal if Mayweather were able to get Cotto and keep his May 2nd date. Without Cotto, Canelo has no chance of fighting on May 2nd unless he were to face Pacquiao or someone like Gennady Golovkin.
