Team Martinez: Forget Pacquiao, Bring Mayweather, Cotto

By Michael Marley

It seemed like a bright, if not radiantly luminescent, idea at the time I had it. But, according to Sergio Martinez promoter Lou DiBella, it was not a thought worthy of an Everlast Einstein. In speaking to DiBella Tuesday afternoon, he put a quick kibosh on the thought of a Sergio Martinez vs. Manny Pacquiao mega-fight. Instead he wants to see his boxer face Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Miguel Cotto. If nobody steps up, then Martinez will target a big name at super middleweight, but DiBella says that won't happen until the end of the 2012, early 2013.

"Sergio is on fire now and Sergio will fight five times, two more times this year and three times in 2012," DiBella said. "It's his time, his time to be really active. We've forgotten about Pacquiao, we know we won't get Manny, he's just too small.

"If Mayweather doesn't want my guy, and if (Bob) Arum won't put (Miguel) Cotto in with him, then we'll look to the super middleweights. But the Showtime tournament has to play out. Maybe between (Lucian) Bute and (Andre) Ward somebody emerges, somebody comes across as a superstar but that's in the future. We'd need a megafight to move up like that.

"For right now, forget it. Sergio is not going to 168 anytime soon. He weighed 158 pounds and that was after eating breakfast.

At the fighter-talent meeting, he was drinking water. So that is as big as he can get for now. A year or a year and a half, maybe he does move up but not now."

Naturally, DiBella would like to put Martinez on PPV but he needs a viable foe.

"Maybe, for a third fight this year, we'd look at (Alfredo) Angulo. If there is no one for PPV, then so what? Then Sergio can be the poster child, the superstar face for HBO. That's not so bad, either."

Looks like Martinez hunting bigger game will have to wait unless DiBella can talk Arum into risking revitalized Cotto or the Mayweather camp into mixing it up with the powerful Argentinean.

At age 36, the future is now for Maravilla.DiBella was skeptical that Sergiy Dzinziruk's style would permit Martinez to shine Saturday night but shine Sergio did in notching a KO in eight rounds.

Maybe he won't still be fighting a decade hence like BHop, a youthful 46 year old, is.