By Keith Idec
Oscar De La Hoya doesn’t think making the Miguel Cotto-Canelo Alvarez middleweight title fight at a catch weight of 155 pounds is going to diminish interest in it.
De La Hoya, whose company promotes Mexico’s Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs), thinks this highly anticipated showdown would be just as intriguing as a non-title fight.
“Both Canelo and Cotto are obviously going to sell this fight alone,” De La Hoya said on a conference call Thursday to officially announce their Nov. 21 HBO Pay-Per-View fight in Las Vegas. “If it’s for no title or for a title, this fight is going to be a guaranteed sell with the fans because the fans know that this is going to be an exciting fight.”
Cotto, 34, won the WBC middleweight title by dominating Argentina’s Sergio Martinez 14 months ago at Madison Square Garden. The Puerto Rican icon has drawn criticism since then, however, for refusing to allow his two subsequent opponents, Daniel Geale and Alvarez, to weigh in at the middleweight limit of 160 pounds for their title shots.
Australia’s Geale (31-4, 16 KOs), a former middleweight champion Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) stopped in the fourth round of their June 6 fight at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, wasn’t allowed to weigh in at more than 157 pounds for that fight.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.