Roach, Arum shun Pacquiao-Cotto rematch

MANILA, Philippines – At this point in their careers, Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto should stay away from each other.

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach and promoter Bob Arum are in agreement about not pitting the Filipino against Cotto in a rematch following the Puerto Rican’s impressive victory over Sergio Martinez last Sunday.

Pacquiao and Cotto met in a welterweight title fight in 2009, with the former stopping the latter in the 12th round of a one-sided bout. Both fighters have gone separate ways since, and Cotto found himself being trained also by Roach.

Cotto now campaigns at middleweight (160 lbs), and on Sunday forced Martinez to quit on his stool in 10 rounds to annex the WBC middleweight title.

Pacquiao, meanwhile, fought his last fight against Timothy Bradley at welterweight. He could slide back to junior welterweight (140 lbs), where Roach claimed his ward will be more powerful.

The trainer admitted he’s relieved both his fighters won’t cross paths again, thinking Cotto has improved a lot since he faced Pacquiao the first time.

"I'm kind of glad that they're growing out of each other's weight classes, so I don't have to worry about it so much," Roach said in a boxingscene.com report by Keith Idec.

“But he'd give Manny a lot of trouble [doing it] this way, yes," he added.

Arum, for his part, has no plans of staging Pacquiao-Cotto 2.

"Manny [against Cotto], I ain't going there. Manny is a fighter. I'm not going there. I don't need the Philippine writers [calling me], keeping me from going to sleep," the promoter explained.

Pacquiao is booked to fight anew on Nov. 23 in Macau against a still-to-be-determined opponent. It could be Juan Manuel Marquez, Ruslan Provodnikov, Luis Abregu or Danny Garcia in the opposing corner.

But it would never be Cotto again.