Miguel Cotto vs. David Lemieux

You don't think Miguel Cotto's retirement bout rates a PPV? Mayweather vs. Berto was a PPV...and Lemieux (if that's what it ends up being) is no Berto.

He's probably the 4th or arguably even 3rd biggest global draw in the sport since DLH, if not Tyson & Lewis.

 

Nah. He can afford to chance pretty much any outcome in a cash-grab with Cotto, for multiple reasons IMO.

1) By now with Lemieux, WYSIWYG. Everybody knows what he is, and what his limitations are. Just because Cotto outboxes him doesn't mean he won't land something big on Canelo. Styles make fights. Perceptions of his "puncher's chance" with any of the elite middles (GGG, Canelo, Jacobs vs. Arias winner etc) won't be harmed by even a 120-108 loss to Cotto, trust me.

2) Again, poverty of expectations. There are no big money draws at middleweight for GGG/Canelo/Jacobs to go after unless they engage in an endless round-robin of insular rematches with each other. Lemieux is going to bring viewers, so he'll get a title shot with any of them next year without having to beg, no matter what happens between him and Cotto (unless he's savagely KTFO a`la D-Rod or something, but even then, eh...)

3) Lemieux has put in yeoman's work since Golovkin beat him up, racking up four wins in two years, barely losing a round, and three of his four opponents were solid contenders. He is ranked highly, and losing to a junior middleweight champ moving up for a one-off farewell bout shouldn't affect your ranking even if this were to actually take place at the real MW limit and not some catchweight. It doesn't undo the work Lemieux has done since 2015. He will still be pretty close to next in line for another crack at Golovkin (even as much as he got tooled last time) after fellow rematch supplicants Jacobs and Canelo. It might once more not be competitive, but there's nobody more deserving or lucrative for Golovkin to face outside the aforementioned two rematches. Sort of like how Tony Thompson kept earning his way back to a Klitschko fight. The first time, you knew he wouldn't win but he earned his shot. The second time, you knew it was going to be a repeat of what we'd already seen - but again, he had clawed his way back there and earned the right to repeat the loss fair & square.

 

What do you mean? Jacobs is fighting Luis Arias literally two weeks before this match. He isn't deprived of anything.

 

I dunno...he actually did weigh in at 159lb even against Stevens, just this year.

159¾ against Golovkin.

A cw of 158 might not be outside the scope of reason..

 

We should know for sure in the next week or two whether Cotto and Lemieux are indeed facing each other as expected or separate opponents. That leaves under 2 months for press tours, marketing, training camp etc.

 

A living legend of the sport hat was fairly recently middleweight lineal champ (and now more legitimately a light middleweight belt holder, in his late 30's) versus a young dangerous top 5-6ish middleweight contender (on h2h fighting ability including chin, power and intangibles- clearly not in terms of skill)? Yeah. I'd say it rates PPV if Mayweather vs. some cracker in his debut does.