DiBella Entertainment sent out a press release, as Kermit Cintron has decided he'd like to fight Miguel Cotto on the eve of the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City next June.
That part is great. It makes excellent business sense, and if Top Rank could pair that fight with their potential Juan Manuel Lopez-Yuriorkis Gamboa showdown, they could sell out Madison Square Garden and do huge business. And I'd like to see Cintron-Cotto, simply because I think it probably makes for a good fight.
Cintron (32-2-1, 28 KO) also said he'd like to settle the score with Sergio Martinez, who basically everyone on the planet believes was robbed into a terrible draw this past February when he faced Cintron. He had this to say:
"I’d like to get a rematch against Sergio Martinez. Some people disputed the draw. Look, the guy wore so much hair gel and moose [sic], that the fumes were making me dizzy. And I still managed to put it on him on only 4 weeks’ notice. Let’s clear the air for good. With an eight week camp, I knock him out. Simple as that!"
"Some people" disputed the draw? Kermit, everyone disputed the draw. The part about the hairdo is sort of funny, I guess, and it's better than him yet again claiming Martinez knocked him out with a headbutt, when every replay you can possibly find shows a clean punch landing and Cintron staggering to the canvas.
Cintron got his career back on track in May when he beat Alfredo Angulo, and he's sort of right that it's a shame Angulo has gotten two more TV dates and Cintron has had zero, outside of a tiny, tiny PPV bout with Juliano Ramos -- which was a shameful mismatch, too. Cintron was offered a fight with Joshua Clottey but chose the fight in Puerto Rico instead. I kind of wonder if he regrets that now.
You also have to consider that Angulo's two TV dates came on ESPN2 against Gabriel Rosado and then an HBO opening fight with Harry Joe Yorgey. Was Cintron going to fight either of them? The WBO putting an interim belt on the line in Angulo-Yorgey was serious B.S., and Kermit was 120% right about that, but big deal. Nobody thinks this erases Kermit's win over Angulo.
Still...
Kermit has a higher opinion of his track record than may be truly deserved. I'm willing to at least question if not erase the Margarito losses. His best win is probably Angulo, the judges gave Kermit a gift draw against Martinez, and past that, what is there? Gatekeepers, journeymen, etc. It's not that he has an empty record, but I've never been quite certain where exactly his reputation came from.
But he deserves another good date, a good fight for good money. He's right about that, and I'm not trying to dispute that claim. He came out and beat Angulo when no one expected him to, and I thought he looked by far the best he'd EVER looked that night. That was in a lot of ways a newer, better, more refined Kermit Cintron, and I'm interested to see if he keeps that up, or if the plodding Angulo helped make him look better just because of the style matchup.
2010 could be a make-or-break year for Kermit if he gets the fights he wants. Here's hoping he does.