By Jason Kim: I have a bad feeling about this Saturday’s fight between WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) and Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) at Yankee Stadium, in New York. Anytime you have a much popular fighter like Cotto going against a pretty much unknown fighter like Foreman, you often get some really weird decisions. When I say weird, I mean robberies. I hope I’m wrong here but I have a strong feeling that Foreman will have to do something extra special to win a decision against Cotto on Saturday night.

Cotto is the bankable fighter here, the one that brings in the big fan numbers. Judges, being human, are naturally going to back the more popular fighter, especially a fighter like Cotto who is really down on his luck and in a do or die situation. Foreman comes into the fight with Cotto at a huge disadvantage in terms of popularity. He’s not even close to being as popular as Cotto, and that could be a problem for Foreman here.

Unless he’s able to pour in enough punches to bust up Cotto’s face and slow down his punch output, I think Foreman could lose by a questionable decision. It might not be enough that Foreman is out-landing Cotto and getting the better of him. He may have to knock him down or knock him out to get a win in this fight.
Cotto really can’t afford to lose now. He’s already been royally beaten in two of his last four fights and one of his wins, his 12 round split decision over Joshua Clottey, was a questionable one.

Foreman has yet to taste defeat, and hasn’t faced any real top level fighters, other than an incredibly rusty and weight drained Daniel Santos. Cotto has taken some serious head blows in his fights with Antonio Margarito, Clottey and Manny Pacquiao. The Pacquiao should probably have been stopped in the 7th round, which was when it was pretty clear that Cotto has zero chance of winning the fight and was just absorbing one way punishment from Pacquiao.

It was around this time that Cotto’s father, out of concern for his son, climbed up on the ring apron to see if Miguel was alright. He let his father know he was okay, but he sure didn’t look it. The fight would have been better off being stopped in the 7th or 8th. I couldn’t see any point in the fight being allowed to go on after this point. Eventually it was stopped in the 12th, but by then Cotto looked horrible, with both eyes swollen and his entire reddened from the shots he had been hit with by Pacquiao.

In an article by Kevin Iole at Yahoo News, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum commented on fighters that take too much punishment, saying “Once you start losing fights on a regular basis, your marketability suffers. I have seen everything in boxing. One thing you see very often is that a guy takes beatings and he’s never the same.

Now, on the other hand, I’ve seen fighters who take beating and they’re refreshed and better than ever. But the former is more prevalent than the latter.” Cotto’s marketability hasn’t started to be effected yet, but if he keeps taking beatings like he did in his fights with Margarito and Pacquiao, it may start to very soon.