To say that you prefer Miguel Cotto vs. Yoshihiro Kamegai over same day main event competition Mayweather vs. McGregor on August 26 is reasonable enough. To say that Cotto-Kamegai is an awesome pairing and the “real” boxing fans’ remedy to Floyd vs. Conor fakery, however, is a load of crap.
Let’s not go so far as to say that Cotto-Kamegai, taking place at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, is as uneven a pairing as Mayweather-McGregor, but it could very well turn out to be every bit as one-sided as the more obnoxious promotion-heavy mega-event taking place just a few hours away in Las Vegas.
Team Cotto certainly didn’t choose Kamegai as an opponent because he was a legitimate challenge likely to push their guy to the limits.
The WBO didn’t hop on board, offering up its vacant junior middleweight title to the winner because it was the best fight to be made for the belt or even the best fight to be made for Cotto. Actually, for those paying attention, the sanctioning body seems to have bumped Kamegai up from no ranking to no. 12 to no. 5 in their 154 lb. rankings based entirely on the fact that big-earner Cotto wanted to fight him.
The above may not be as offensive to some as the Nevada State Athletic Commission greenlighting a bout between a 0-0 boxer and, arguably, the best fighter of the last 20+ years—But it’s not exactly a noble, good-for-boxing stab at matchmaking, either.
Realistically, Kamegai looks to be made for slicing and dicing at the hands of a guy like Cotto. He’s tough, always game, and earnest in every ring effort, but his weaknesses are lined up almost perfectly with Cotto’s strengths. If you break down the fight, it almost seems as though Kamegai was built to deliver the kind of tough, but not too tough, losing performance the Boricua battler needs at this point of his career. The Japanese brawler is pure fodder for the Cotto late-career highlight reel.
Unless something really unexpected happens, Kamegai will be Kamegai. And that means plodding forward, looking for a brawl, but absolutely ill-equipped when dealing with even the slightest stylistic nuance. Movement befuddles him, hand speed handcuffs him. An opponent who refuses to step inside the proverbial phone booth will have Kamegai a full step off the entire fight, unable to throw much of note because he simply won’t be able to set his concrete-heavy feet. Remember, this IS the fighter thrown off by the hand and foot speed of Alfonso Gomez.
None of this, of course, is a happy coincidence to Cotto and his team. The former four-division world champ has become more boxer than fighter in these last few years of his career and has played the risk-reward game as well as any elite-level fighter in the business. This burning desire he had to fight Kamegai for the last six months or so—a burning desire, by the way, that helped dissolve his working relationship with Roc Nation Sports—didn’t come about because Miguel was looking for a challenge or the best available fight. If a close, competitive fight breaks out at StubHub, it certainly won’t be because it was meant to be close or competitive.
Passing off Cotto-Kamegai as a “real” fans’ fight and honorable counter-programing to the “insulting” PPV “farce” of Mayweather-McGregor is pure fantasy or straight-up dishonesty. On any other night, stacked up against nearly any other high-end fight, it would be regarded as the cynical match-up it truly is. But on August 26, the big target on Floyd-Conor makes for plenty of convenient denial.
To be fair, Cotto-Kamegai should be pretty entertaining for what it is—a well-crafted squash pitting a sharp-punching, beautifully skilled veteran against a tough, come-forward brawler who knows no quit. Don’t confuse any of that with the fact that Cotto is being set up to win spectacularly and that Kamegai is there to lose.
Degrees of cynicism in the August 26 matchmaking can be debated when talking about the dueling main events that evening. But don’t pretend that Cotto-Kamegai is some noble effort to give fans exactly what they want.