By William Mackay: I hate to say it but I think WBA light middleweight champion Yuri Foreman is going to put former World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Miguel Cotto out of his misery on June 12th, at the Yankee Stadium, in New York.

The only good thing that I can think of that outcome is that at least Cotto will likely have a huge crowd to see if for what could be his last fight of his career. That’s a great way for Cotto to go out.

If Cotto gets bloodied and battered like I think he will, at least he’ll have his fans there to see him fight for what should be the final time. I think Cotto is crazy for moving up in weight and taking on Foreman. After the beatings that Cotto has taken on fights against Antonio Margarito, Joshua Clottey and Manny Pacquiao, I think he is making a tragic mistake in moving up in weight to fight a big fighter like Foreman.

I can see why Cotto is doing it. He’s probably thinking about winning an easy paper title over the light-hitting Foreman and then using the title as Pacquiao bait to get the Filipino fighter to go after it to see if he can win an easy 8th world title. It’s a good plan in theory, but I think it’s not one that the short 5’7” Cotto is capable of carrying out.

Foreman hits harder than some people think, hard enough to splatter Cotto’s face and open up all that scar tissue around both of his eyes. Cotto seems to bleed nowadays if you look at him wrong, and I think Foreman will quickly have Cotto bleeding like a stuck pig on June 12th. And as we saw in his fights against Margarito, Clottey and Pacquiao, Cotto is a lot less aggressive once he suffers a cut.

It’s like he loses 40% of his aggression once he gets cut, and starts backpedaling and hanging on the ropes. Cotto getting a cut against a fighter like Foreman is almost a given. It’s not that Foreman hits really hard, but he has an excellent head first attack in which he lowers his head like a billy goat and comes charging in. It’s almost impossible for his head not to come in contact with the face or the top of his opponents head when he does this.

I give the fight two, maybe three rounds before Cotto is cut the first time by Foreman’s head. Once the blood starts flowing, Cotto will probably be running like scalded dog trying to stay away from Foreman. The fight is as good as lost at that point for Cotto, because Foreman will jab him to death from the outside and continue with his knife-like attacks with the lowered head.

As badly bloody and beaten up looking that Cotto looked in his fight against Margarito, that won’t be nothing compared to what Foreman is going to do to Cotto’s face on June 12th. I can see Cotto’s corner stopping the fight to save him from taking any further punishment by the 9th or 10th round. Cotto’s face will be covered with blood, as will his trunks and shoes.

Literally, Cotto will probably look like someone took a large bucket of blood and slowly poured it on him to make sure it soaked him completely. At that point, I think it’s pretty much the end for Cotto. I can’t see him continuing on after losing to Foreman.

If Cotto moved back down in weight to the welterweight division, he’d just as likely take a similar – but not as bad – beating from the likes of Floyd Mayweather Jr., Shane Mosley, Andre Berto and of course Pacquiao. And I don’t want to see Cotto get beaten up again by Pacquiao, but there’s probably very little chance of those two fighting again, because I think Foreman is going to rip Cotto to shreds in their fight and retire him.