By Michael Collins: Former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios is totally repulsed at the idea of watching Manny Pacquiao fight Miguel Cotto for a second time, and he’d much rather Pacquiao take on some new blood than to see him blast apart Cotto for a second time.
Bob Arum, their mutual promoter, wants to make the Cotto-Pacquiao II rematch despite their first fight being a terribly one-sided bout with Pacquiao battering Cotto all night until stopping him in the 12th. At the time fight was halted, Cotto’s face was red and swollen and his eyes were slits for him to see out of.
Rios told examiner.com writer Chris Robinson “It kind of sucks. Cotto’s done. I think Cotto is done. He’s looking for another payday before he can get out.”
It sure doesn’t seem like Cotto has been in an awful hurry to fight the other top contenders in the division in the past few years, such as James Kirkland, Alfredo Angulo, Sergiy Dzinziruk, Vanes Martirosyan, Austin Trout and Saul Alvarez.
Cotto’s loyal fans like to say he didn’t ever fight those guys because he knows he could beat them. To that you have to ask, then why did Cotto fight Ricardo Mayorga, Yuri Foreman and Antonio Margarito in his last three fights? It seems that Arum has been keeping Cotto on ice for the past three years since Pacquiao beat him and not matching him with anyone that can beat him again like Margarito and Pacquiao did.
Cotto beat Margarito in a rematch in New York last December but the results were marred by the ringside doctor pulling the plug on the fight just 9th round after Margarito had his best round. Margarito’s right eye was nearly closed at the time but he could still see out of it. However, the stoppage made it seem like the doctor saved Cotto rather than saving Margarito.
I don’t know that too many people are raving for a Cotto-Pacquao rematch. I mean, the only way I’d want to see it is for kicks to see how much faster Pacquiao can stop Cotto. That’ not a good reason to want to see a fight, but that’s about the only reason I could think of for wanting to see the Cotto vs. Pacquiao mismatch for a second time.
Usually when fights are total mismatches, the promoters involved no better than to try and force feed a rematch to the boxing public. But in this case, Arum promotes both Pacquiao and Cotto, so if he wants to shove the Cotto-Pacquiao rematch down boxing fans’ throats with a hefty $55 price tag on it, there’s no one that’s going to stop him.