By Jim Dower: Last Saturday’s bout between Miguel Cotto and WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman brought in HBO its highest ratings of the year, bringing in a rating of 3.9 for the bout which took place at Yankee Stadium, in New York. This is somewhat of a surprise because Foreman, 29, isn’t a well known fighter outside of the New York area and has only been shown on cable a handful of times in bouts that were less than exciting.

And Cotto had been struggling before last Saturday’s fight, losing two out of his last four fights. However, Cotto has been one of boxing’s biggest stars for the past three years, and that could help explain the interest in the Cotto-Foreman fight. Cotto, 29, was coming off a 12th round TKO loss to Manny Pacquiao in his last fight in November 2009. That fight got a lot of visibility with boxing fans, both hardcore and casual fans of the sport.

As for as last Saturday’s fight goes, Cotto dominated the early rounds with his powerful jab, often knocking Foreman back from the force of the jabs. Foreman came on starting in the 3rd round, and was able to find a home for his right hand in the face of Cotto. In the 6th round, Cotto landed effectively with his jabs once again and was able to catch Foreman with them often during the round.

Cotto had stopped jabbing as much in rounds 3 through 5 for some reason. In the 7th, Foreman injured his right knee when it gave out on him while he was bouncing around the ring. Foreman had been wearing a knee brace during the fight and it was later learned that Foreman had injured his right knee years ago when he fell off his bicycle as child.

He reportedly never had surgery on the knee because he didn’t have health insurance and likely has been walking around with a partially torn up knee for the past 14 years since his bicycle accident occurred. Once Foreman injured his leg, Cotto immediately went after him, as Foreman was no longer able to move nearly so much. Cotto then dominated the rest of the 7th, as well the 8th round. In the 9th round, Cotto took Foreman out with a left to the body.

The fight was exciting for six rounds. After the injury, the fight was no longer exciting because you knew it was going to be stopped soon because Foreman couldn’t fight without limping badly. The undercard wasn’t much. Unbeaten junior middleweight Vanes Martirosyan defeated previously unbeaten Joe Greene by a 10 round decision. The fight lacked action and neither fighter performed well.

Greene looked like he didn’t want to fight and failed to throw enough punches to win. And Martirosyan looked very average for an unbeaten fighter, and looked little better than he had in his controversial decision over Kassim Ouma. It was hard to imagine either of Martirosyan or Greene ever winning a major title based on how they looked.