By Jason Kim: Emanuel Steward, the new trainer for former WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto, plans on returning the 29-year-old Cotto to an earlier part of his career when he was still finding success. After starting out his career winning his first 32 fights, Cotto has lost two out of his last four fights, both by knockouts. Recently, Cotto signed on legendary trainer Emanuel Steward to start training him for his next bout against World Boxing Association light middleweight champion Yuri Foreman on June 5th at Yankee Stadium, in New York.

In an article at Primera Hora, Steward said “My job is not to make a complete change of style for Miguel, but to return to his form earlier in his boxing career. People say that the way to beat Miguel is to block and land uppercuts. We are correcting that. We must work for him to be the same fighter he was when he faced Shane Mosley and Kelson Pinto. Miguel went through three very tough fights with Antonio Margarito, Joshua Clottey and Manny Pacquiao. He picked up some bad habits that can be corrected. In this stage of training, I talk to him a lot. Miguel has been listening attentively.”

Cotto took a lot of vicious punishment in his fights against Margarito, Clottey and Pacquiao. A lot of boxing fans think that Cotto is totally shot at as a fighter and should consider hanging up his gloves. The problem for Cotto is that after he was stopped in the 11th round by Margarito in 2008, he didn’t take much of a break from facing tough opposition. Cotto has one easy fight against Michael Jennings in his next fight after the Margarito loss, but then jumped right back into the heat with a grueling 12 round fight against Clottey.

Cotto won the fight, but he took a lot of head shots and looked bad late in the fight. The fight against Pacquiao, which was another bout where Cotto took a lot of punishment, resulted in him being stopped again, this time in the 12th. Instead of taking a break from action, Cotto has decided to move up in weight to challenge the light-hitting Foreman. Cotto fans see it as a low risk fight because they think Foreman won’t be able to hit him hard enough to give him any major problems.

However, Foreman hits harder than people think, is bigger fighter, and is difficult to hit. Cotto could end up taking another loss and wind hurting his career. Foreman is a very tough fight for Cotto to be taking given the kind of beating that Cotto took in his last fight against Pacquiao back in November 2009. Cotto could be sorry for it later if things don’t work out like he planned.