Cotto-Canelo Has Potential To Be Bigger Than Mayweather-Canelo: De La Hoya

Alvarez and De La Hoya in 2012 — WBC super welterweight champion Canelo Alvarez (L) of Mexico sits next to Oscar De La Hoya, president of Golden Boy Promotions, during a news conference at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada May 3, 2012. Alvarez will defend his title against Shane Mosley of the U.S. at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 5. REUTERS/Steve Marcus

While the highly anticipated match-up between Canelo Alvarez of Mexico and Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico is still roughly three months away, Oscar De La Hoya believes that the match-up will rival boxing’s marquee match-ups in the past.

The former fighter and founder of Golden Boy Promotions has declared that the Cotto-Canelo match-up is going to be huge, and that it can potentially do better than the Floyd Mayweather vs. Alvarez fight in 2013, as well as his own fight against Felix Trinidad in 1999.

“Ever since I started Golden Boy Promotions, I've been promoting the biggest events in the sports. This has the potential to be bigger than Mayweather-Canelo, this has the potential to be bigger than Trinidad-De La Hoya - but one thing about us, we always try to surpass, to up whatever fight were doing,” De La Hoya said, according to boxingscene.com. “We try to do bigger and better. Is this biggest fight we're promoting? Today [it is]. Tomorrow is could be Canelo-Cotto 2 and it would be huge.”

Curiously, De La Hoya did not mention the Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao fight last May, which broke the all-time boxing records both in pay-per-view sales and gate attendance.

To compare, Mayweather-Pacquiao drew 16,219 fans for about $72.2 million in gate ticket sales, while the Mayweather-Alvarez drew 16,146 fans for over $20 million in ticket sales. The De La Hoya-Trinidad bout drew 11,184 fans for $12.9 million ticket sales with all figures reported by the Nevada State Athletic Commission website.

For PPV sales, it appears that the figures for the Mayweather-Pacquiao’s fight will be unbreakable for a long time; the “Fight of the Century” drew about 4.4 million PPV buys with sales of over $400 million. In comparison, Mayweather-Alvarez had about 2 million PPV buys for $150 million PPV sales and De La Hoya-Trinidad had 1.4 million PPV buys for $64 million then.

Alvarez (45-1-1) lone loss in his career came against Mayweather while Cotto (40-4-0) is on the comeback trail winning his last three fights. The Mexico vs. Puerto Rico rivalry angle is also expected to play a big part in the hype of the event.

The Canelo-Cotto fight will be held at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on Nov. 21, 2015.