Quote Originally Posted by RP33 View Post
you're comparing two different things though.. Cotto is not 35 and trying to cement his legacy by defeating the best available.. Granted, Cotto is a champ, and should be fighting higher caliber fighters, but after just fighting mosley, etc.. you can't say that he's turning anyone down.
This is exactly right.

Cotto is 27 and coming off of the two biggest wins of his career. Calzaghe was in his mid-30s and coming off of a win over a complete journeyman like Sakio Bika.

Also, we already knew going into this fight that Cotto was going to be fighting the Cintron/Margarito winner next (in other words.... another tough fight). We didn't know for sure at the time of Calzaghe-Manfredo that Calzaghe would be fighting Kessler next, it wasn't agreed to yet.