It has been very widespread throughout the press in recent days, that Mikey Garcia opted against signing a contract to fight the renown Puerto Rican 4-weight world champion Miguel Cotto. Such a fight would have seen Garcia jump up in weight by 14lbs to the unnatural weight of the Jr Middleweight limit.
Garcia considered the fight for a long time but ultimately decided that proposal wasn’t best suited for him; given that if he had struck a deal with Golden Boy he would have agreed to the lucrative career defining fights against not only WBO Jr Middleweight Champion Miguel Cotto but was also presented with the opportunity to unify at his natural weight class against the Lineal and WBA World Lightweight Champion Jorge Linares but part of the agreement would have seen Garcia relinquish his promotional rights to Golden Boy Promotions on a long-term basis and that proved too much of a sticking point for Garcia.
Miguel Cotto’s hall of fame trainer Freddie Roach spoke exclusively with boxingscene.com, Roach has shared his opinion on that potential matchup not being made and has viewed the decision as a positive. Roach has said the potential matchup would have put Cotto in a no-win position and inflicting the first professional defeat of Garcia’s career would have been merely dismissed as a case of Garcia being ‘too small’.
“[Cotto-Garcia] could’ve been a big fight, but I’m not really sold on it,” Roach elaborated before the Cotto-Ali press conference Tuesday at The Garden. “A Puerto Rican against a Mexican is good value, but how well does [Garcia] draw? I’m not really sure. It would be a big fight for him, but if Miguel beats up on a little guy, then people are gonna say the guy was too small anyway. So I don’t think he would get the proper credit.
Freddie Roach went on to discuss Garcia’s current infatuation in trying to seek out a high profile fight against one of his fighters, most notably Pacquiao or Cotto. “Mikey Garcia is making a lot of noise and stuff like that,” Roach said. “But he’s calling everybody out. He called Pacquiao out, too. But he’s a little guy and we can’t go in there beating up little guys.
Freddie Roach then went on to discuss how the ill feeling between him and the Garcia team has developed especially since their physical altercation a few years back, which was captured on camera and then went viral on youtube. “Obviously, they don’t like me, him and his brother and trainer [Robert Garcia]. They called out Pacquiao and they called out [Cotto], so whoever I have they’ll call out. But who does he really wanna fight? He’s been called out by a couple of guys, also, and he’s not going there” Roach concluded.