IT won’t be bigger than Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao but it will be very popular, it will be the second biggest fight of the year, there’s no chance it will be bigger – but it will be more exciting. Mayweather just fights that style, he’s a very defensive fighter but he still wins. But I think with Miguel Cotto and “Canelo” Alvarez, it’s a better match-up. Both guys come to fight, they can both punch a little bit so it makes for a better fight. The winner will probably get Mayweather again, but that fight may be boring because Mayweather is always boring.
There’s talk about the winner fighting the winner of Gennady Golovkin and David Lemieux, who fight in October, but you have to consider risk and reward. “GGG” is an awfully tough guy to fight for not a lot of money because he’s not a huge draw on pay-per-view yet and he’s getting bigger. He’s a nice kid and a great fighter. That’s the fight I would like if we win this one though, I think Miguel can comfortably beat him but we need to get this one out of the way first.
Alvarez might come after us aggressively, though he might be a little afraid of my guy’s punching power so he might not be as aggressive as he usually is, but his last opponent was hand-picked for him, a guy who just got out of jail and was out of shape. So I’m not looking at that fight at all, we’re just going back at his past fights and looking at the mistakes he makes and Miguel is very good at picking up on those things.
We have more experience, Miguel is a better boxer. Obviously it’s Mexico versus Puerto Rico so there’s a huge fight there. I love this fight for Miguel, I’ve wanted this fight for a long time. It’s a great fight for Miguel and I expect nothing less than to win by knockout. Miguel’s a little bit older and so forth and a lot of people think it’s a case of ‘out with the old, in with the new’ but we’re not that old yet, we’re not going anywhere.
We’ve got a game plan that we’ll work on but I don’t think Alvarez is that great a fighter. I’ve seen him train at my Wild Card gym before and I don’t think he’s the hardest worker in the world. My guy will beat him on condition alone, we’ll take him into deep water and get rid of him in the later rounds.
Cotto wasn’t getting along with his former trainer, so he called me and we get on very well, he’s very comfortable at my gym. When you don’t get along with the trainer nothing really goes right, it’s a difficult situation to be in. So he came here and we hit it off right away, we both love to work hard. We’re very comfortable together.We met each other at a good time, it was time for him to make some changes and not be so predictable so we made those changes. He likes my style of training and my methods and it works well.
