By Jim Dower: Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) has taken a pounding in the last three years in the ring, taking countless shots to the head, suffering multiple cuts and too numerous to count bone jarring shots. Cotto, once unbeaten and considered perhaps the best fighter in the welterweight division, has now lost two out of his last four fights. Cotto is extremely fortunate he hasn’t lost three out of his last four fights, because his 12 round split decision win over Joshua Clottey last year was controversial and it could have gone either way. It was an impressive outing, not even close.

The last good fight from Cotto was a 5th round TKO win over British welterweight Michael Jennings a year ago in February. It was a good win, but then against Cotto got the win over a fighter that probably didn’t belong in the top 10 of the welterweight division at the time Cotto fought him. Cotto was stopped by Antonio Margarito in July 2008, and then taken out once again, this time by Manny Pacquiao in November 2009.

With that loss, Cotto is now moving up in weight to the junior middleweight division to take on Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s). To try for a change of luck, Cotto has picked up new trainer Emanuel Steward to help prepare him for the Foreman bout. In an article at the Miamiherald.com, Steward says “I didn’t make any changes, just subtle changes. I just added a bit more experience to the camp. It has been a very good fight.”

Unfortunately, it may take more than small changes for Cotto to reverse his losing trend. He’s taking on a much bigger fighter in Foreman, and is coming into the fight off the Pacquiao loss. With Cotto looking pretty bad in his recent fights, I think Steward needs to make more drastic changes for Cotto to keep him from taking any more punishment. He needs a lot of help in trying to cut off the ring on Foreman, because Yuri is going to be on a constant move all night long against. He’s not just going to stand and trade with Cotto and make it easy for him.

Foreman is going to landing hard shots and then getting away before Cotto can land any of his retaliatory shots. Unless Steward has made more dramatic changes to Cotto’s game, I don’t see a big benefit by Cotto changing trainers at this stage in his game. He needs a total revamping of his offense and defense to keep him from tiring out late in his fights and continuing to take a lot of punishment.

Steward needs to take Cotto’s game apart from the basic essentials and try to keep him from getting pounded so much. It wouldn’t be a big deal if this was a younger version of Cotto, but he’s now almost 30, has been hit a lot in the past three years and is struggling to win his fights. Cotto is hoping to beat Foreman in order to get the WBA title and then hope that Manny Pacquiao want to go after it. Other than using the title as bait for Pacquiao, there’s really no point in Cotto moving up in weight to take on the bigger Yuri Foreman.