Will Miguel Cotto retire after losing title to Canelo Alvarez?
LAS VEGAS - Miguel Cotto's fight week started and ended with bad news.
It started with him being stripped of his WBC middleweight title Tuesday for refusing to pay the $300,000 sanctioning fee, on top of having to pay middleweight mandatory Gennady Golovkin an $800,000 step-aside fee so he could fight Canelo Alvarez.
It ended with him - after hearing the wide margin by which the judges had him losing to Alvarez on Saturday night - telling his trainer, Freddie Roach, "Wow!" Then adding: "Are you OK? That's all that matters."
That's the last we heard from Cotto.
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The 35-year-old future Hall of Famer from Puerto Rico left the ring, went to his dressing room and did not address the media in the post-fight news conference.
And so began the buzz: Will Cotto retire from the sport after 13 years of brutal fights and much punishment in the ring, including 12 rounds worth Saturday night from a powerful Canelo Alvarez, who came in probably 15 pounds heavier than Cotto?
Roach, who did talk, said he thought his guy won the fight.
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"He fought a good fight, a good fight for boxing, but I thought we had the edge there at the end," said Roach, a seven-time trainer of the year. "But it went the other way and that's life.
"I think he has a future, a couple more fights in him, but we're getting close to the end. He's had a good career. I'd like to see a rematch, but we'll see. It was a very competitive fight, and good for boxing for sure."
Cotto may have two options: Return to the junior middleweight division (154 pounds) and fight once or twice more, or end his career.
"That's definitely an option we will pursue," said Roach about returning to 154. "Going into the fight, Miguel was about 159 pounds and his opponent was probably 175. We did have trouble backing him up."
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Earlier in the week, Cotto, when asked how many fights he had left in him, lowered his head and said, "Not many. Probably one more after this."
He talked about maybe trying to lure Floyd Mayweather out of retirement for a rematch of their 2012 fight, then calling it a career.
But that was on the condition he beat Canelo, and beat him impressively.
"I would love for him to win this fight by knockout, call out Mayweather, then end it," Roach said then. "Because he always tells me, 'if I had you in my corner when I fought him, I would have knocked him out.' He tells me that story all the time."
That, of course, did not happen.
Which begs the question: Have we seen the last of Miguel Cotto as a fighter? He left the ring Saturday night at least $15 million richer, which was his guaranteed purse, and with his brain still intact. He will probably make quite a bit more from the pay-per-view revenue.
He's a big family man and should be set for life.
Roach couldn't avoid the "R" word.
"I'm sure we'll talk about (retiring)," he said. "We'll see how he feels. But the way he works in the gym, he works hard and I don't believe it's over. But the thing is, we will have to discuss that, we will have a long talk about that and we'll make the right decision, because I care about my fighters.
"If it's over, it's over. I guess we'll have to see."