Pacquiao vs. Cotto: Big Fight, Good Fight

Bob Arum’s Top Rank Promotions officially announced yesterday that the Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto fight, scheduled for November 14 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, is a done deal at a catch-weight of 145 pounds. In what has been a strange, transitional year for the sweet science, this is likely to prove the only true super-fight of 2009 in terms of both the legitimacy of the match-up and the interest it generates.

So far this year, there’s only been one really big boxing event – Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton on May 2. And though that was a high-profile bout that garnered a lot of crossover attention and did big business (over 800K in PPV buys), when Pacquiao pulverized Hatton in only two rounds, it confirmed the belief of most boxing pundits that the fight was a mismatch from the start. Once again, Hatton rode his rabid following and great popularity in the UK to a gigantic payday, and once again he proved to be a second-rate fighter with first-rate drawing power.

Other than Pacquiao/Hatton, the only other meeting of A-list names in ’09 was January’s fight between Shane Mosley and Antonio Margarito at the Staples Center. But while that was also a very successful promotion, the mere fact that it wasn’t a pay-per-view event indicates its stature in the category of bling. When a fight is really big, it’s PPV, no questions asked. Mosley/Margarito was right on that pay-per-view bubble, and in the down economy, the promoters chose to put it on regular HBO, a smart move for all concerned.

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