By Rick Reeno
Lou DiBella, promoter of WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto, reached out to BoxingScene.com to reply to the recent comments that were made by Bob Arum, CEO of Top Rank, regarding a possible fight between Berto and WBA 154-pound champion Miguel Cotto.
In an earlier story by BoxingScene's Lem Satterfield, Arum said a potential Cotto-Berto fight was very difficult to make because of the economics involved. Berto's high earning power with HBO, according to Arum, would make the numbers too difficult to manage.
"Berto shouldn't command anything like what HBO is paying him. Therefore, it makes it very, very difficult to make a big fight for Berto against somebody like a Miguel Cotto because the kid wants to be paid more than he would get paid for ordinary fights. Therefore, he would be vastly overpaid. So it's very difficult," Arum said.
DiBella tells BoxingScene that a Cotto-Berto fight is easier to make than Arum leads on. According to DiBella, there is no problem with Cotto receiving the lion's share of the money.
"If Cotto's people really wanted to make the fight, and Arum really wanted to make the fight, then the fight would get made because we wouldn't price ourselves out of it. We have no problem with Cotto making significantly more money and we never asked for anything that resembled Cotto's share of the pie, but if Bob believes that Berto is entitled to 25%, then he's right - then the fight is difficult to make," DiBella said.
"Whenever me and Bob want to make a fight, the fight gets made, so I guess he doesn't want to make the fight. Bob may say it's very difficult, but Bob knows that it's not very diffcult to negotiate with me. I guess he wants to keep it in-house. And Miguel Cotto vs. [Julio Cesar] Chavez Jr. would be a public execution."
