By Lyle Fitzsimmons

For the contrarians who lament the muddled state of championship boxing and suggest we simply do away with sanctioning bodies and ignore their self-serving rules, you have a hero in your midst.

The World Boxing Council’s middleweight kingpin (for the time being, at least) struck a blow for title-level disorder Saturday night, but it wasn’t when he dispatched a bloated, non-combative Daniel Geale.

Rather, the Puerto Rican star made his biggest statement after the fight, when he confirmed that his next trick would be to once again step through the Mexico-based organization’s mandatory challenger – Gennady Golovkin – to engineer a pay-per-view match later this year with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

The WBC’s president was smiling in the ring after the TKO and has suggested his alphabet group will sign off on a Cotto-Alvarez match – even though Alvarez holds no belts and has defeated no middleweight contenders – with the proviso that a pre-fight contract be drawn up guaranteeing Golovkin’s got next.

Cotto even stammered through an answer to Max Kellerman’s question about Golovkin, ultimately arriving at a shrugging “Why not?” when Jim Lampley’s stubbled accessory pressed forward.

“We need to do our fights,” he said.

“After that, if he’s available and he wants to fight, I’m available, too.”

It made for compelling theater amid recurring force-feed promotions of Dwayne Johnson’s imminent sports agent metamorphosis, but Cotto would have been a touch more authentic if he’d simply channeled an old-school Riddick Bowe and dropped the green strap into the nearest trash receptacle.

Because with a subsequent concession to Kellerman that he’s not a real middleweight, the 14-year veteran created all the plausible denial he’ll need when it comes to making his post-Canelo plans.

In other words, he’s more likely to wed Antonio Margarito than he is to fight Gennady Golovkin.

It’s no less than an intentional thumb in the eye to the establishment.

And many may herald Cotto’s stubbornness as a blow for truth, justice and the alphabet-free way.

But while rebellion scores with nihilists and the few fighters already capable of telling Mauricio Sulaiman what to do with fees, it means far less to the rank and file whose mission is to attain similar cheekiness – but whose reality in the meantime is that title belts are the foundation on which insolence is built.

In most cases, suggests Eddie Chambers, you’ve got to be an opening act before going full-on diva.

“For a fighter that is just coming up, winning a title is important, but for an established fighter not so much,” said the Philadelphia-based heavyweight, who lost a full-fledged world title bid to Wladimir Klitschko in 2010 – five years after briefly wearing the universally disregarded IBU crown.

“Because he is now more of a household name and therefore, a star, and doesn't really need any belt.”

Cotto’s four-division track record has clearly put him on the high side of that line.

Golovkin, meanwhile, still resides somewhere to the south.

He needs a defining win – against a guy at or near Cotto’s level – to get to a place where baubles no longer matter. And unless a guy at or near Cotto’s level provides a chance for such an ascension – or a network like HBO refuses to pony up for Cotto’s blowout unless he gets his first – he’ll remain no more than collateral damage in the fallout of others’ pay-per-view bombshells.

“Cotto is no dummy. He can probably make more money fighting Alvarez than he can GGG,” said Randy Gordon, former chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission and current host of “At The Fights” on Sirius/XM radio. “Plus, he has a bit of a chance to beat Alvarez. He has no chance to beat GGG. I would still hunt for a Floyd Mayweather fight, but between Alvarez and Triple-G, it's got to be Alvarez.”

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This week’s title-fight schedule:

SATURDAY
Vacant IBF junior lightweight title – Birmingham, Ala.
Jose Pedraza (No. 1 IBF/No. 9 IWBR) vs. Andrey Klimov (No. 6 IBF/No. 13 IWBR)
Pedraza (19-0, 12 KO): Second title fight (1-0); Held IBO title at 130 pounds (2014, zero defenses)
Klimov (19-1, 9 KO): First title fight; Third fight scheduled for 12 rounds (2-0, 0 KO)
Fitzbitz says: The Puerto Rican doesn’t have the recognizable resume names that his foe has, but he feels like the more surging commodity here. He should pick up a belt in a close one. Pedraza by decision

WBA featherweight title – New York, N.Y.
Nicholas Walters (champion/No. 1 IWBR) vs. Miguel Marriaga (No. 7 WBA/No. 15 IWBR)
Walters (25-0, 21 KO): First title defense; Third fight in the United States (2-0, 2 KO)
Marriaga (20-0, 18 KO): First title fight; Second fight in the United States (1-0, 1 KO)
Fitzbitz says: Walters has erased a couple of marquee names and earned himself the premium-cable shot from the small room in midtown Manhattan. Now he’ll make it pay off. Walters in 8

WBC heavyweight title – Birmingham, Ala.
Deontay Wilder (champion/No. 5 IWBR) vs. Eric Molina (No. 9 WBC/No. 38 IWBR)
Wilder (33-0, 32 KO): First title defense; Fifth fight in Alabama (4-0, 4 KO)
Molina (23-2, 17 KO): First title fight; Fighting in his fourth state (Nevada, Texas, California)
Fitzbitz says: As a 33-year-old without zero signature wins, Molina is the definition of crash-test dummy for Wilder’s home state star turn. There’s little reason to believe he’ll break character. Wilder in 3

Last week's picks: 3-0 (WIN: Menayothin, Oosthuizen, Cotto)
2015 picks record: 39-9 (81.2 percent)
Overall picks record: 678-232 (74.5 percent)

NOTE: Fights previewed are only those involving a sanctioning body's full-fledged title-holder – no interim, diamond, silver, etc. Fights for WBA "world championships" are only included if no "super champion" exists in the weight class.

Lyle Fitzsimmons has covered professional boxing since 1995 and written a weekly column for Boxing Scene since 2008. He is a full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him at fitzbitz@msn.com or follow him on Twitter – @fitzbitz.