Miguel Cotto’s trainer, Freddie Roach, has stated that after his fighter knocks out Canelo Alvarez on Saturday night in Las Vegas – as he believes he will – he would like the Puerto Rican modern great to ride off into the sunset on the back of a second Floyd Mayweather fight.
Cotto, the only Puerto Rican fighter to win four world titles in as many weight classes, fought the newly retired Mayweather back in 2012, without the services of Roach, who is claiming he has not only nailed the right game plan to topple Canelo on Saturday, but could also devise the correct one for Cotto to beat Mayweather, should Floyd return next year to reach 50-0, of course.
“I would love for [Cotto] to win this fight by knockout, call out Mayweather and then end it,” Roach said. “He always tells me ‘If I had you in my corner when I fought him I would have knocked him out.’ He tells me that story all the time.”
Roach also believes that thanks to Cotto’s greater strength, he could better implement the plan he had devised for Manny Pacquiao to beat Mayweather earlier this year. A fight that will be forever in question to many die-hard Pacquiao fans thanks to ‘shoulder-gate.’
“I think [Cotto] could pull off the strategy I had [for Pacquiao], but I think Manny was maybe a little bit smaller and not as strong as Miguel [when he faced Mayweather],” Roach said.
“[Cotto] is a bigger, stronger guy and I think it would be a good fight for him. I think I can put him in a very aggressive mode for that fight. He always tells me, ‘I would have killed him, Freddie, with [your] game plan.”
Should Cotto dethrone Alvarez on Saturday, he will retain his lineal middleweight champion status, though Gennady Golovkin will be the new WBC champ at 160 after Cotto refused to pay the $300k sanctioning fees for the fight with Canelo, resulting in him no longer being recognised as champ by the sanctioning body.
As for Floyd, he continues to insist that he will be staying retired, although many fans expect him to try and attain the 50-0 that will take him past Rocky Marciano’s oft-cited unbeaten ledger.
Speculation remains that he could return shortly after the new MGM Casino in Vegas opens in April of 2016, although Floyd himself has repeatedly stated his focus is now on his burgeoning stable of ‘Money Team’ fighters, that includes WBC super-middleweight champ, Badou Jack and red-hot 147 lb prospect, Errol Spence Jr.
Twitter @undilutedpoison
