By Rick Reeno

LAS VEGAS - The headlines piled up in the last few days, when the World Boxing Council derecognized Miguel Cotto as their middleweight champion.

Cotto and the sanctioning body were unable to reach an agreement on the sanctioning fee for this Saturday's fight, when the Puerto Rican star takes on Mexico's Saul "Canelo" Alvarez at the Mandalay Bay.

As part of the agreement with the WBC, Cotto was obligated to pay mandatory challenger Gennady "GGG" Golovkin a step-aside fee of $800,000. While Cotto agreed to pay the step-aside, he refused to meet the WBC's demand of $300,000 to sanction the fight with Canelo. He offered $125,000 - which the WBC rejected.

"I don't need a belt to fight Canelo. I keep $1.1 million in my banking account, it's better for me," Cotto said.

"We're having so much problems right now, in these days, with boxing organizations, because they make too many champions in one division. And then every guy believes they have the right to face the champion right now, like Golovkin, and I have to pay him $800,000 bucks just to move away to make the fight with Canelo. It's not fair for me. It's not fair to the boxing. It's not fair for us as the boxer and it's not fair for the fans."

"They want more sanctioning fees and they create a new champion every six months. It's not fair for us, because it's the boxers who have to pay the sanctioning fees."

Cotto is still scratching his head over the WBC's decision to make Golovkin the mandatory challenger - because GGG was already a world champion under two rival organizations, the WBA and IBO.

Golovkin became the mandatory challenger last year, when he faced WBC interim-champion Marco Antonio Rubio. For whatever reason, the WBC approved that fight as a unification. In the past, the WBC would have stripped Rubio of his interim-title for facing a world champion of a rival sanctioning body.

Cotto believes the motivating factor behind that entire scenario was money - because the WBC would receive a much higher sanctioning fee from a Cotto-GGG encounter.

"He's the champion of the WBA and the [IBO] and he's the mandatory challenger for the WBC. I never see that before. It's all monetary interest, that's all," Cotto explained.

There could be some legal controversy coming out of this.

Sources with knowledge of the details are claiming that Cotto signed a binding agreement to pay Golovkin that $800,000 step-aside. Golovkin and his team are apparently still expecting that large sum of money.

But Cotto may have a different position on that subject, because the WBC title is no longer on the line (at least for him). If Canelo beats Cotto, he would become the new WBC champion. If Cotto wins, then the belt would remain vacant until the WBC issues a ruling on the matter.

"The reason [to pay the step-aside] was the championship belt, because he was the mandatory challenger of the WBC, but we don't know exactly if we have to pay now. We don't have the championship belt in line for the fight. We have to check on that," Cotto said.

Cotto's legal adviser, Gaby Penagaricano, was unable to confirm whether or not his client was still obligated to pay Golovkin.

"Those are legal issues that we'd rather not get into, because it may have ramifications and we're not going to get into that," Penagaricano stated.