Miguel Cotto stripped of WBC belt, but says he doesn't need title to fight Canelo Alvarez
LAS VEGAS - As major boxing promotions go, Miguel Cotto vs. Canelo Alvarez was humming along like a smooth-running machine leading up to their highly anticipated pay-per-view middleweight title fight on Saturday night at Mandalay Bay.
Both promoters, Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions (Alvarez) and Jay Z's Roc Nation Sports (Cotto), the relatively new kid on the block, have bent over backwards to emphasize how smoothly they negotiated one of the biggest fights of the year - especially compared to the May 2 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao debacle, which took nine years, countless harsh words and tremendous angst to put together. This figures to be one of the biggest in the long Mexico vs. Puerto Rico rivalry as well.
Then Tuesday happened.
The World Boxing Council, the organization for which Cotto holds his middleweight belt, announced in the morning that it was stripping the 35-year-old Puerto Rican fighter of his belt for refusing to pay the $300,000 sanctioning fee the WBC was charging each fighter. Canelo and GBP paid the Mexican fighter's fee.
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Cotto is also under a contractual obligation to pay the mandatory challenger, Gennady Golovkin, an $800,000 step-aside fee because he does not want to fight Golovkin should he defeat Alvarez. According to Cotto, though, that seems up in the air. That's still $1.1 million before the fight even starts.
So the fight will go on (HBO PPV, 9 p.m. ET) with Cotto fighting only for his lineal Ring Magazine middleweight title, which is probably more important anyway.
Alvarez can take the WBC belt - and the lineal title - if he wins the fight.
De La Hoya ripped Cotto on Tuesday, saying it was a disgrace for boxing and a disgrace for the promotion to not pay the sanctioning fee. Cotto shot back that De La Hoya should mind his own business, to which De La Hoya responded: "This IS my business."
On Wednesday, shortly before the final press conference, De La Hoya told Paste BN Sports that maybe this isn't such a bad thing.
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"I think it's good for the promotion that we have a little controversy. It doesn't hurt the promotion. (Cotto and Alvarez) are very polite to each other. They're very respectful, which is great," De La Hoya said.
"But I go back to the Bob Arum days, when he promoted me. He used to tell me (using his best raspy Arum voice), 'You know what Oscar? A promotion always needs a controversy.'
"This was our controversy. I'm not saying this is going to take the fight over the top, because I think the fight is already over the top in terms of going over the million-buy mark on pay-per-view. But this gives it some extra life, you know?"
He said he thought it would be a bigger distraction for Cotto than Alvarez because it was Cotto who had to deal with the monetary and title ramifications. "So the way I see it is, first round to Canelo," De La Hoya said.
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Cotto called the $300,000 fee absurd and told a group of reporters Wednesday that he really doesn't care about the belt. He said he offered the WBC $125,000 for the fee, but the organization rejected it. "I don't need a belt to fight Canelo," he said. "And I keep $1.1 million in my banking account. It's better for me."
Cotto said it's not fair that every weight division needs four champions who all charge sanctioning fees - WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO. "It should be enough, but they charge more sanctioning fees and they create a new champion every six months. And the boxers have to be the ones who pay the sanctioning fees. It's not fair."
Cotto did say his fight with Alvarez was bigger than any organization, and it seems everybody agrees that, title or not, boxing needs a great fight, especially coming on the heels of the disappointment of the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout in May. That fight had a record 4.4 million pay=per-view buys at $100 each, but left millions with a bad taste in their mouths from lack of excitement.
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Asked if boxing needs Cotto vs. Alvarez to be a great fight, De La Hoya said, unequivocally, "Yes. Boxing is always going to have big events, but Saturday night we need a great fight. We have the big event. We need a great fight. And this Saturday I'm sure we will have a great fight. Because of styles, there's no way around it. These guys are going to fight and it's going to be fun."
Freddie Roach, Cotto's Hall of Fame trainer, agreed.
"We need this," Roach said Wednesday. "We need this fight for the sport."
De La Hoya and Roc Nation Sports President Michael Yormark agreed that what could make the difference in the success of the promotion is social media.
"Social media is obviously a very strong way to communicate your message," Yormark said. "Roc Nation and Cotto Promotions are well versed on the social media platform, and we think it will help us get to the mainstream and make sure that not only are we talking to the hardcore boxing fan through social media, but also to talk to the casual sports fan and, quite frankly, the individual who just likes to be part of a big event."
De La Hoya is looking for more involvement from Roc Nation's social media giants, rap mogul Jay Z, the company's founder, and his wife Beyonce.
"I'm still waiting patiently for Jay Z to get involved," De La Hoya said. "The pay-per-view business is an impulsive buy, so if somebody's sitting there on Friday night watching TV, and they see a commercial, or they see a tweet from somebody who has over 10 million followers, that impulse is going to drive you to buy the fight.
"We still have our hopes high that Jay Z and Beyonce and all the celebrities Roc Nation has contacts with can help us push the fight."