Miguel Cotto, the WBC middleweight champion of the world, is set up to face Daniel Geale in June at the Barclays Center in the first defense of his 160-pound title. Cotto, whose middleweight belt is his fourth in as many weight classes, can reportedly move on to a major payday if he is successful in this bout.
Rumor has it that Cotto's fight will be televised by HBO, but HBO stipulated that if he and Canelo Alvarez win their upcoming bouts that they fight one another in the fall. Alvarez is scheduled to fight James Kirkland on May 9.
The mandatory challenger for Cotto's 160-pound belt is Gennady "GGG" Golovkin, who owns the WBA and IBO belts. Golovkin has knocked out 19 straight opponents, and is undefeated in his professional career. Despite burgeoning popularity and recognition, Golovkin has found it difficult to get big-name fighters in the ring with him and Cotto is no exception. Should Cotto defeat Geale, and move forward with an Alvarez fight, he will likely have to drop the WBC belt since Golovkin is his mandatory.
Of course, plans in boxing are never set in stone. Cotto was upset by Austin Trout in 2013 when an opportunity to fight Alvarez was in the near future. This winter, negotiations to face Alvarez in May were scrapped after Cotto kept stalling; many feel he thought he was in the running to have a rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr. if talks with Manny Pacquiao broke down.
Geale is most known in the United States for getting knocked out by Golovkin in Round 3 of their 2014 title fight, but he is a former middleweight champion, and more importantly, he's a natural middleweight. When Cotto fought Sergio Martinez in 2014 and won the belt, Martinez was dogged by injury. Geale will be healthier, although Cotto is making him fight at a 157-pound catch weight, and making no apologies for it.
"I had to do it before when I faced Manny Pacquiao. He made me come down to 145 pounds," Cotto told ESPN.com. "Pacquiao used any advantage he had against me and I will do the same with everybody in the division. I am a small middleweight and I need to use this to my advantage."
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