By Jhonny Gonzalez
To get the man they want, Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto are prepared to make concessions to land WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao on November 13. Reports in Mexico and Puerto Rico suggest the two rivals are racing against each other to get the Pacquiao fight.
The two Top Rank promoted stablemates are at the top of the list to fight Pacquiao. At this point everything depends on the negotiations to make the fight between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Bob Arum, the CEO of Top Rank, gave Mayweather until mid-July to accept a deal to fight Pacquiao in November. If Mayweather doesn't agree to the deal, then Margarito and Cotto are the two top choices to fight the Filipino fighter.
Pacquiao knocked Cotto out last December in the twelfth round. Since the loss, Cotto has moved up to junior middleweight to capture the WBA belt. Cotto recently had a meeting with Pacquiao's adviser Michael Koncz in Puerto Rico. They spoke about a rematch in November.
Margarito is heading to Las Vegas on Friday to stand before the Nevada State Athletic Commission. He wants to obtain a license to box to eliminate any obstacles from making the fight with Pacquiao. It's also a move to prevent Cotto from being ahead of him in the race. If Margarito has no license to fight in America, then Cotto becomes the obvious choice. Margarito lost his license after inserts with a plaster-like substance were discovered in his hand wraps before a scheduled fight with Shane Mosley in January 2009.
Cotto has no issue with giving Pacquiao a catch-weight to make the rematch. A possible weight of 150 to 151 has been reported. For his part, Margarito is willing to go back down in weight to 147-pounds. He left welterweight after admitting to weight struggles prior to last year's defeat to Mosley. Margarito will remain at junior middleweight unless a Pacquiao fight comes around.
Because of his present career situation, Margarito is in less of a position to negotiate and he has fewer options. Cotto will require more money and it's not a guarantee he will bring more pay-per-view sales to the table. It's been less than a year since Pacquiao stopped him. Cotto has other possibilities like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Andre Berto. A fight with Margarito will require less money. There will be no problem with making that fight because Margarito will give Pacquiao the upper hand in the negotiations. Margarito holds a win over Cotto. He knocked him out in 2008 in eleven rounds.
Koncz favors the Cotto rematch. Arum appears to favor the Margarito fight. If there is no fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather, the race between Cotto and Margarito could get very interesting.
