By Victor Salazar
This past weekend in Brooklyn, middleweight contender Willie Monroe Jr. sat ringside at the Barclays Center and watched WBC champion Miguel Cotto retain his belt with a fourth round stoppage of Daniel Geale.
Monroe, who spent most of his career in the junior middleweight division, took the opportunity in entering and winning the Boxcino middleweight tournament and parleyed the accomplishment into a fight with WBA/IBO champion Gennady Golovkin.
Golovkin is regarded by many as the best middleweight in the world while Cotto is recognized as the champion in the division by the Transnational Boxing Ratings Board and The Ring Magazine.
Although Golovkin is seen as the number one contender to the throne, Monroe prefers a Miguel Cotto vs. Saul "Canelo" Alvarez showdown over a Cotto vs. Golovkin scrap.
“I don’t want to take nothing away from Golovkin because we just fought but I would love to see Canelo-Cotto because of the rivalry between Mexico and Puerto Rico,” Monroe told BoxingScene.com. “That would be so big. Not only that Miguel Cotto is more of junior middleweight and you heard him ask Max the rhetorical question, ‘do I look like a middleweight?’ Cotto came in at 153 but he looked really good tonight. I think he should fight Canelo.”
Although Cotto says he’s not a middleweight, he holds the lineal title. Some believe that by forcing Geale to come in at three pounds below the division limit - it took away from his sensational stoppage. But Monroe disagrees with the notion.
“You have to give that credit to Cotto,” Monroe said. “He’s fought the best of the best and still at a high level and the way he performed tonight was credit to him. I wouldn’t take the credit away from him saying that it was Geale’s weight. He put on a great show.”
Monroe feels that he is a middleweight now but if needed to come in at a catch-weight for a big fight he would. He says it’s all a part of the business that is boxing and accepts it.
“If you’re on the A-side and if you have the power to do so why not,” Monroe said about Cotto’s move demanding a catch-weight for his fights. “People have to realize that boxing is a business. So you have to be dominant on the political side as you are in the ring. Boxing’s not what it was yesterday and it’s not going to be what it is tomorrow. You just have to accept everything and enjoy good fights.”