Cotto vs Ali Odds For Saturday – This Saturday night HBO Boxing brings us Miguel Cotto versus Sadam Ali fot he WBO world title at 154 pounds.
Cotto won the vacant WBO title this past August when he decisioned Japan’s Yoshihiro Kamegai. Entering that fight, he had been on a layoff of close to two years. Cotto is ued to seeinghis name move the needle but that fight ran on the same day as Floyd Mayweather Jr and Conor McGregor’s reord setting PPV, so few saw it. Though Cotto looked to have added a few wrinkles to his game in earning a comfortable decision over Kamegai, it wasn’t a standout performance that has people screaming for more Miguel Cotto.
Cotto notched the win but if he was expecting a big money offer to materialize he was left waiting. Ali is not really a big name, though at 25-1 he is a solid competitor. He is a Brooklyn native, so he will be fighting in his hometown, but Cotto has been the headliner at Madison Square Garden on close to a dozen occasions and he will be the main attraction.
Cotto has long faced criticism for the cautious approach he used throughout his career to select his opponents. If the payoff wasn’t massive, then the risk the opponent presented was heavily studied. Ali was a safe choice and a good match-up for Cotto.
You have to give credit to Ali for taking the fight, because as a fighter, if you get a chance at a world title you have to jump on it. Ali is facing a tall order here however. There is really no one on Ali’s resume near the skill level of Cotto except for perhaps Jessie Vargas, and that was the fight that Ali lost. Vargas was the WBO world champion at welterweight when he fought Ali, so Ali lost a step up fight a weight class below. Cotto is not exacty huge for the weight class so it will not be much of a factor here but if Ali can engineer the win against Cotto on Saturday, he will be lost against some of the top guns at super welterweight.
The HBO card also features two other world title fights to entice the audience.
WBC world super bantamweight (122 lbs) champion Rey Vargas (30-0) takes on the challenge of Oscar Negrete (17-0). Vargas is battle tested, having won the world title against Gavin McDonnell in England in February of this year. In Negrete, he is getting a fighter who has fought most of his career under the Golden Boy banner at bantamweight and is moving up four pounds to a new weight class.
The second world title fight in support of Cotto-Ali comes in the flyweight division as the WBO is creating an “interim” title for the winner of Angel Acosta (16-1) and Juan Alejo (24-4-1). The WBO’s “regular” world title belt is in the hands of Kosei Tanaka of Japan, and the winner could be on a collision course with him for a title unification come 2018.
Check back later in the week to see if more odds pop up from Saturday’s card. The current Cotto-Ali odds are below.
Cotto vs Ali Odds For Saturday / Check out more boxing news and features at The Sweet Science.
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