By Chris Williams: Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) has been badly exposed in three out of his last four fights against Antonio Margarito, Joshua Clottey and most recently in his fight against Manny Pacquiao. On June 5th, Cotto will be moving up in weight to try and take the title away from WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) at 154. Emanuel Steward, the new trainer for Cotto, says that his best weight is 151 and he thinks Cotto has improved immensely in the short period of time that he’s been training him. That sounds nice, but Cotto’s skin is like paper at this point in his career with a massive amount of scar tissue over and around both of his eyes, just waiting to be torn up by Foreman’s slashing punches.

Cotto is a sucker for an uppercut and pretty much anything that his opponents throw at him. While I have a ton of respect for Steward for doing a great job with tall heavyweights Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko, I have serious reservations about Steward being able to help Cotto much with his many problems. Cotto is what he is – a short, wide-bodied fighter with poor defense and serious stamina problems. Cotto can punch a little, but unless he gets his opponent out in the first six rounds, then he starts to fade, take punishment and get cut to pieces.

It happened like this against Margarito, Clottey and Pacquiao. The fight against Clottey basically showed that Cotto is going to struggle against any good fighter that can stick around past the midpoint of the fight and put hands on him every once in awhile. This isn’t something that Steward is going to be able to fix just by teaching Cotto to punch and grab like Wladimir. Cotto is too short to be able to stay on the outside, and peck away with his jab all night long against Foreman.

Cotto will be giving away five inches in reach to Foreman and that is going to be a huge problem for him. Steward is used to training tall fighters that can control the fight from the outside with their jabs. Cotto can’t do that, at least not against a tall junior middleweight like Foreman. Cotto tried to jab against the 5’11” Margarito and came up short with his jabs due to Margarito’s longer reach. Foreman moves a lot better than Cotto and doesn’t tire out like him. Cotto can move well for short periods of time but if he has to run from an opponent or chase them, he quickly tires out. Since Cotto is moving up in weight, it’s doubtful his stamina will be any better in this fight.

I expect to be a little worse than it usually is and I can see Cotto looking dog tired in the 2nd half of the fight. Against Zab Judah, Cotto struggled badly, getting rocked a couple of times by shots. Cotto was able to come back in that fight after landing some big low blows that really hurt Judah and turned the fight around for him. I hope Cotto keeps it clean against Foreman. I’d hate to see him teeing off with shots south of the border and then end up getting penalized or disqualified.

I think is going to get beaten and possibly stopped by Foreman. I think it’s too late in the game for Steward to make many changes with Cotto’s stamina and defense, and I think he’s going to get punished and retired by Foreman in this fight.