by William Mackay: If former WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) wants to keep alive in the Manny Pacquiao lottery, he’s going to have to get by World Boxing Association (WBA) light middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) next month on June 5th at Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, New York. Cotto, 29, will have a huge audience in the stadium to watch his fight with Foreman and to root him on to victory. If this fight were to have taken place two years ago, before his fight with Antonio Margarito, I would see Cotto taking the fight without too many problems.

However, Cotto has taken some awful punishment in his recent fights against Margarito, Joshua Clottey and Pacquiao. Cotto has taken a career’s worth of punishment in those three fights alone. This is why there’s possibility that Cotto may have huge problems when he steps in the ring with the wily Foreman. It isn’t like Cotto couldn’t beat Foreman if the fight was to be held in a phone booth, but the problem is it won’t be a traditional back and forth style fight like Cotto is accustomed to.

Instead, Cotto is going to be taking shots from Foreman and then will be forced to either chase after him or deal with Foreman’s constant clinching. In looking at Cotto’s fight with Oktay Urkal in 2007, Cotto fought poorly against Urkal and didn’t know how to deal with his hit, run and clinch style of fighting. Foreman is ever tougher to fight than Urkal, with better power and more size. Cotto is going to really have his hands full trying to figure out a way to catch up to Foreman and handle his clinching.

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum wants to match Cotto and Pacquiao in a rematch, but only if Cotto has the WBA light middleweight title in his possession. It’s important because it will be killing two birds with one stone. Pacquiao wants to win an 8th world title and by moving up in weight to take another Top Rank fighter in Cotto, he will have the perfect opportunity. Cotto is a bigger star that Foreman, so a second fight between Pacquiao and Cotto will do well, even though their first fight was as one sided as they come.

If you were to poll hardcore boxing fans whether they wanted to see Cotto-Pacquiao again, most would say no. However, casual boxing fans are a completely different story. They’ll watch Pacquiao fight anybody and if Cotto can redeem himself somewhat by picking up a win over Foreman, it will help erase some of the memory for fans of his two recent losses to Antonio Margarito and Pacquiao. Cotto doesn’t want to waste time building himself back up with tune-ups like most fighters do after getting stopped in two of their last four fights.

Cotto wants to get back in there with Pacquiao for another big payday. The danger for Cotto is that he’s taken so much punishment and will now be moving up in weight against an unbeaten and still fresh Foreman. This could be too tough a fight for Cotto after the three hard fights he’s been in during the last two years. Cotto may want to stay busy and avoid taking it easy because he wants to continue to get huge paydays like the one he got in the Pacquiao fight, but his body may not be up to the task to take too much more punishment.