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Miguel Cotto to take off remainder of 2014

Although he was penciled in for a Dec. 13th fight date, Miguel Cotto has decided to sit out the rest of the year and return to action in early 2015.

Rich Schultz
Wil Esco is an assistant editor of Bad Left Hook and has been covering boxing for SB Nation since 2014.

Scheduling can sometimes be problematic when working with high profile trainers. Cotto's current trainer, Freddie Roach, also trains this little Filipino guy who has a fight coming up on November 22nd. That fight will take place in Macau, with the training camp being held in General Santos City. That left little time for Miguel Cotto to squeeze in a training camp for his own December fight, unless he was willing to make the excursion to the Philippines, which he wasn't.

So, Cotto reasoned that with no natural available opponent for December (though he could've had one in GGG if he so chose) he might as well sit out the rest of the year and look to make a fight at the top of 2015. I, myself, didn't think GGG was a good fight for him at this point in his career, and I still don't, so I certainly won't berate him for skirting that issue. And believe me, that would've been a serious issue.

"We were trying to coordinate having [Roach] with him at all times during his camp for the planned December fight, but at the end, it was not possible due to his prior commitments with various fighters that will train in Asia during a good part of that period," Gaby Penagaricano, Cotto's adviser, told ESPN.com. "We looked at various scenarios, but at the end, Miguel decided to wait until next year. He has no problem at all not fighting this year and is very happy with his decision."

Top Rank's Todd duBoef says the plan is to have Miguel return in February or March on PPV, and naturally they want to stage the fight at Madison Square Garden, where Cotto brings out the Puerto Ricans in droves. As for an opponent, no one has been targeted specifically at this point. Lets just hope that if it's going to be a PPV fight we'll actually get a PPV worthy opponent. I know, we fans ask for too much...

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