By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Miguel Cotto would like another crack at Canelo Alvarez.
If Puerto Rico’s Cotto can beat James Kirkland on February 25 in Frisco, Texas, the former four-division champion considers views a rematch with Alvarez as one of the most viable alternatives for what could be the last fight of Cotto’s career later this year.
“I’m here for the best fighters and the best fighters out there,” Cotto said Wednesday during a press event in Manhattan to promote the Kirkland fight. “If they want the fight, if they want the rematch to clear [up] what happened November 21st, 2015, they know where and how they can make it.”
Mexico’s Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) beat Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) by unanimous decision in their 12-round fight 13 months ago at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. Alvarez won a mostly uneventful bout by large margins on all three scorecards (119-109, 118-110, 117-111), but Cotto and his handlers believe their fight for Cotto’s WBC middleweight title was much more competitive than that.
“It was close,” Cotto said. “We orchestrated the plan in a perfect way and we believe that were the winners of the fight.”
Freddie Roach, Cotto’s outspoken trainer, more than agreed with him.
“Our last fight was I thought a very controversial decision,” Roach said. “I thought we won that fight.”
The Alvarez-Cotto fight didn’t deliver the type of consistent action many expected, but it drew roughly 900,000 buys and generated approximately $58 million in pay-per-view revenue. An Alvarez-Cotto rematch might not replicate that financial success, but it is a saleable bout, particularly if an Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin fight doesn’t happen.
“I love that fight,” Roach said. “I think they owe us that, the Canelo camp. I thought we won the first time, but we’ll change things a little bit in the second one. But we’ll look forward to that later on.”
The 36-year-old Cotto first must get past Kirkland (32-2, 28 KOs), of Austin, Texas, in an HBO Pay-Per-View main event from The Ford Center at The Star, the Dallas Cowboys’ training facility.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
