Jessie Vargas (27-2, 10 KOs) is not impressed at all with WBO junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto’s decision to end his career with a fight against welterweight Sadam Ali (25-1, 14 KOs) on December 2. HBO Championship Boxing will be televising the Cotto vs. Ali fight in the main event rather than placing it on the undercard.
Vargas says he expected better from a Hall of Fame fighter like the 36-year-old Cotto (41-5, 33 KOs) to end his career with. Vargas says he wants offered the Cotto fight for December 2 by Golden Boy Promotions, but the money that was offered wasn’t what he was looking for. For a fight like that, he wanted a better deal.
Ali was easily knocked out in the 9th round by Vargas in their fight last year on March 5.
”Just to be clear on the Miguel Cotto offer. my advisor Guadalupe Valencia informed me that Golden Boy was interested in me fighting Cotto,” said Vargas on his Instagram site. ”I immediately expressed interest. However, the money that GBP offered was not close to sufficient for such an important fight. I respect Cotto, as he is a hall of fame fighter, but frankly the fight they picked for him is not up to par with his legacy. I knocked out Ali in 9th round, and we were both fighting at 147 #Boxing #Boxeo.”
For some reason junior middleweights weren’t offered the Cotto fight. Guys from the 154lb. division woud have been the obvious choice for Cotto to fight, since he’s defending his WBO junior middleweight title on December 2. But if the idea was to set the fight up as one that Cotto would have the big advantage, then picking the opponent from the 147 lb. division is the smart thing for Golden Boy to do. They picked out Vargas’ former knockout victim.
You could see how that would be disturbing to Vargas, because he thought that Cotto would find someone good to end his career against. If you look at the fighters that Cotto has faced in his last 5 fights, he’s fought almost entirely weak opposition except for his fight with Saul Canelo Alvarez. For the last 3 years of Cotto’s career, he’s faced these fighters: Sergio Martinez, Daniel Geale, Saul Alvarez and Yoshihiro Kamegai. Canelo was the only guy that was good at the time Cotto fought him. Martinez was done, as was Geale.
It looks like Sadam Ali wasn’t the first pick for the fight with Cotto.
These are the fighters that were offered the fight with Cotto:
• Errol Spence Jr.
• Danny Garcia
• Mikey Garcia
• Lamont Peterson
If Ali beats Cotto, it’s going to tarnish his resume in a big way, because this is not one of the better welterweights division. Cotto’s decision to fight a limited fighter like Ali puts him in a no win situation. Boxing fans won’t care if if/when Cotto beats Ali, because he’s not a talented fighters. But if Cotto loses or struggles to win, then it’s going to affirm in the minds of a lot of the boxing fans that he was never that good to begin with. After all, Cotto lost to Austin Trout, Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito.