By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Assuming Canelo Alvarez and Miguel Cotto win their upcoming fights on the network, HBO Sports president Ken Hershman expects that they’ll fight each other sometime in the fall.

Intense negotiations for a May 2 bout between the Mexican star and the Puerto Rican icon broke off in January, prompting an aggravated Alvarez to instead secure a fight against James Kirkland. Hershman doesn’t think that failure will remain an impediment to them completing contracts the next time around.

“That’s the fight everybody wants to see and that’s the fight we want,” Hershman said during a meeting with reporters Wednesday at HBO’s Manhattan headquarters. “Neither guy has a walkover, so they have to get to through those fights. But if they do, then we expect to be doing that fight in the fall.”

Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) and Kirkland (32-1, 28 KOs), of Austin, Texas, will meet May 9 at Minute Maid Park in Houston, home of Major League Baseball’s Astros. Four weeks later, HBO also will televise Cotto’s June 6 fight against Australia’s Daniel Geale (31-3, 16 KOs), a former middleweight champion, from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

“Canelo and Cotto is the most natural next step if we can pull that off, if nothing unusual happens,” Hershman added. “But again, this is premature to talk about because both guys have tough tasks ahead of them.”

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.