MIGUEL COTTO IS no longer the WBC middleweight champion after he was stripped of the belt by the World Boxing Council.
According to a representative of Cotto’s promotional company, the decision by WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman comes as a result of the Puerto Rican’s refusal to pay $1.1million in fees.
As a result, only Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez can claim the WBC belt if he’s victorious in Saturday night’s bout against Cotto at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Gennady Golovkin, the WBA and IBF champion, was the mandatory challenger for Cotto before he agreed to fight Alvarez, so Cotto was subsequently required to pay Golovkin a ‘step-aside fee’ to allow the more lucrative fight against Alvarez to take place.
It’s understood that Cotto was to pay $800,000 to Golovkin, while the WBC wanted $300,000 in order to sanction this weekend’s fight. However, the aforementioned representative says Golovkin wasn’t paid, the LA Times reports.
Cotto told reporters that he was willing to pay Golovkin in full, plus $150,000 for the WBC sanctioning fee from a reported purse of $10 million, but no more. The WBC asked for $300,000, Cotto declined, according to the representative, and the title was stripped.
“After several weeks of communications, countless attempts and good-faith time extensions trying to preserve the fight… Miguel Cotto and his promotion [Jay Z’s Roc Nation Sports] did not agree to comply with the WBC rules and regulations, while Saul Alvarez has agreed to do so,” said Mauricio Sulaiman in a WBC statement.
“The WBC’s decision is premised on the fact that Miguel Cotto and his camp are not willing to abide by the… specific conditions the WBC established to sanction the fight. Simply put: they are not willing to respect the very same rules and conditions which applied to Cotto becoming WBC champion.
“The WBC stands by its honorability and will not participate in the abuse of power and greediness, which has taken our boxing world to regrettable actions from different parties.”
Cotto told reporters: “Let me ask you: If you had the opportunity to keep this much money in your pocket, or give it up to keep a title that doesn’t carry much weight given that there’s [four] different titles in our division, what would you choose to do? I can take the money I saved and buy whatever belt I want.”
Cotto won the WBC title last year when he defeated Sergio Martinez and went on to successfully defend the belt against Daniel Geale in June of this year.
