By Michael Collins: According to fightnews.com, a possible deal between unbeaten WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) and WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s) could be announced in the next few days.
Apparently, Golden Boy Promotions has made an offer to Cotto on behalf of Mayweather for a bout that will take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on May 5th.
Bob Arum had wanted to get Cotto for a fight with his guy Manny Paquiao but there had been a sticking point with the weights. Paquiao doesn’t want to fight over 147lbs, while Cotto doesn’t want to go below 150 because of how hard it is for him to lose weight without losing strength.
If the deal goes through, this is exactly what Mayweather had been looking for in terms of date and venue with Manny Pacquiao but has been unable to make a deal due to Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum wanting a different date in late May or early June and also wanting the fight to take place in a larger venue than the MGM Grand. Arum decided to have an outside 40,000 seat arena built for the fight but then said it couldn’t be ready until late May or early June.
Mayweather starts serving his 90 day jail term on June 1st, so obviously this need for a special arena was going to get in the way of Mayweather fighting Pacquiao. In the end, Arum’s arena, although a good idea in theory, turned out to be a negative one because it has cost Arum and Pacquiao the big money fight against Mayweather. Talk about your self-defeating moves. But then again if Arum was never serious about wanting to match his star Pacquiao with Mayweather in the first place, then it really doesn’t matter that the arena delay contributed to the breakdown of the negotiations.
We already know about Mayweather wanting more than a 50-50 deal with Pacquiao, but that’s something that could have been worked through.