By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Oscar De La Hoya thinks Miguel Cotto-Canelo Alvarez has supplanted Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao as the fight boxing fans want to see more than any other.

“What I feel, and I think what’s happening now is people are starting to talk not about Pacquiao-Mayweather,” De La Hoya said recently during a question-and-answer session with Alvarez at HBO’s Manhattan headquarters. “They’re now starting to talk about Cotto-Canelo. It’s not the second-best fight to be made. Now it’s becoming the best fight to be made. So something’s happening.”

De La Hoya, whose company promotes Alvarez, gets the sense fight fans are beyond tired of discussing Mayweather-Pacquiao because they’re resigned to the long-discussed mega-fight never occuring.

“People are getting tired,” De La Hoya said. “People want to see it, and they can’t see it. They’re getting tired of just asking and asking, whereas here, with Cotto and Canelo, if you ask you’re going to get it because both fighters want it.”

Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) also acknowledged his strong desire to face Puerto Rico’s Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs). The 33-year-old Cotto, the WBC middleweight champion, overcame a unanimous-decision defeat to American southpaw Austin Trout (27-2, 14 KOs) nearly two years ago at Madison Square Garden by battering former contender Delvin Rodriguez (28-7-4, 16 KOs) and Argentina’s Sergio Martinez (51-3-2, 28 KOs), then boxing’s undisputed middleweight champion, on his way to technical knockout victories in his last two bouts.

“It’s a natural fight,” Alvarez said. “It’s a good fight. It’s a fight that the fans want to see – just a natural. It’s got to get made. I feel that everybody would be very happy and emotional about that fight.”

De La Hoya and Bob Arum, whose Top Rank Inc. has promoted Cotto’s past two fights and many others, are expected to begin negotiations in the coming months for an Alvarez-Cotto pay-per-view showdown they’d like to schedule for May 2. Alvarez was supposed to box Ghana’s Joshua Clottey (38-4, 22 KOs) on Dec. 6 at Alamodome in San Antonio, but Alvarez withdrew from that fight earlier this week due to an ankle injury.

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.