Miguel Cotto Will Not Fight In 2016, Aiming For Early 2017 Return
Miguel Cotto’s twilight years as a boxer are approaching and it will be some time before Cotto steps back into the ring.
Cotto, who has not fought since losing his middleweight titles against Canelo Alvarez in November of 2015, was trying to get a fight for the end of 2016, but will return to the ring in 2017. Bryan Perez, an executive for Miguel Cotto Promotions, told ESPN that Cotto decided not to compete for the remainder of the year.
“We have had several conversations with Roc Nation about where Miguel is at and what he wants to do. Everything is good but with different circumstances he decided not to fight in 2016,” Perez said. “We had different conversations about fighting in December but we decided not to fight and do it in the first part of 2017, between February or March.”
The 35-year-old Puerto Rican is the first ever four-division world champion in the country’s history. The announcement would mean that Cotto will not fight for a full calendar year for the first time in his career, which began in 2001.
Perez said that Cotto wants to keep fighting after his next fight, which will be the last fight in a three-fight agreement with Roc Nation Sports.
As far who Cotto’s next opponent will be, three names have popped up: Juan Manuel Marquez, LaMont Peterson and Timothy Bradley.
Cotto and Marquez were engaged in talks to fight later this year, but could not finalize on a deal. After talks ended with Marquez, Cotto and HBO were having conversations about fighting Peterson in December, but it was too close to the November 19 fight between Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward. Bradley, a former world champion, said that he would like to move up in weight to face Cotto.
