Sergio Martinez and his camp seem to see the writing on the wall in regards to their fight with Miguel Cotto. Martinez has reached out to WBC mandatory contender Marco Antonio Rubio for a fight if Cotto doesn’t accept his offer.
Cotto was offered $10 million dollars by Golden Boy promotions to fight Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez.
Cotto would have to be out of his mind to pass up that pay day in this stage of his career. Martinez knows that Cotto can’t turn that down and is moving onto the next best fight in his eyes.
The problem is that fans aren’t excited to see Martinez fight an average fighter and at his age Martinez should be capitalizing on big PPV quality fights.
Martinez’s advisor Sampson Lewkowicz had this to say during his interview with Boxing Scene:
“We’ve already made Rubio a firm proposal to go to Argentina. Unfortunately, the broadcasters who make the fights in the United States, HBO, is not interested (in the fight). For that reason the fight has to be in South America. Sergio promised (WBC president Jose) Sulaiman that he would do his mandatory fight. In Argentina they love the idea of (Martinez facing) a Mexican, so it’s all geared for that fight. Hopefully in 30 days we can specify the date. In 24 hours we can have a sell out.”
“Cotto must make a decision. If he wants to make history on the 7th of June in a stadium with 50,000 people, then perfect, but if not – we’ll put 50,000 people in Buenos Aires against Rubio.”
Martinez would be better suited to fight Antonio Rubio in Feb/Mar and then train for a July/Aug fight with rising star Gennady Golovkin.