By Jim Dower: WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) is the underdog going into his June 5th fight against former World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) at the Yankee Stadium, in Bronx, New York. However, there’s an argument to be made that it should be the 29-year-old Cotto who should be the underdog in this fight, not Foreman. After all, Cotto has taken a career’s worth of punishment in three of his last fights against Antonio Margarito, Joshua Clottey and Manny Pacquiao and there’s question whether Cotto has all that much left in the tank.

He went down easily twice against Pacquiao in his last fight when trying to trade with Pacquiao briefly in the early going and then needed to literally run to survive until the 12th. When Cotto tried to trade with Pacquiao in the 12th, he was taken out with a blizzard of punches. Cotto took punishment every time he stopped to trade with Pacquiao in the earlier rounds and was only safe when he was running. Cotto also looked to be on the verge of being stopped in his fight with Clottey last year in June. With all the scar tissue around Cotto’s eyes, he quickly was cut in the Clottey fight was getting battered in the 9th and 10th rounds. To his credit, Cotto stayed on his feet and was able to retake control of the fight in the 11th and 12th rounds after Clottey tired out. Cotto was stopped in the 11th round by Antonio Margarito in July 2008. It was a brutal beating in the 10th and 11th.

With those beatings behind him, Cotto comes into his fight against Foreman with a question mark over his head. Cotto’s fans see him and figure he’s the same fighter he once was, but just looking at how bad he looked in his fights against Margarito, Clottey and Pacquiao, it’s pretty clear that Cotto isn’t the same fighter he was three or four years ago. He seems to have changed. But it may not matter if Foreman doesn’t have the defense, the chin or the offensive skills to compete with Cotto. There’s no question that Cotto is the superior offensive fighter. He’s leagues better than Foreman is on the offensive side of the game.

Cotto’s power and offensive skills to be the same as they ever were, maybe even better because he’s using his jab more and supposedly is punching better to the body. This isn’t where Cotto is weak. His weakness is his ability to absorb punishment, his defense and his stamina. Cotto has a lot of scar tissue around his eyes and tends to cut easily because of that. As we’ve seen in his fights against Margarito, Clottey and Pacquiao, Cotto doesn’t fight nearly as well after he’s been cut compared to how he does without the cuts.

He becomes much more conservative with his offense and moves more. That wouldn’t be a problem except that the movement from Cotto tires him out, making him more susceptible to getting stopped. Cotto just wasn’t made to be much more of fighter that can move on a limited basis. When he tries to do too much moving, he fades quickly and fights much less effectively. Hopefully, his trainer Emanuel Steward has noticed this and given Cotto instructions not to run too much against Foreman, because he’s going to have problems if he uses his wheels too often in the fight.

Foreman, 29, may not have a lot of knockouts on his record, but he has a lot better power than you would believe. He seems to be getting more powerful in his last few fights, punching harder and sitting down on his shots more. He has sneaky power and enough to hurt a fighter like Cotto, especially if Cotto comes into the fight compromised in any way.