By Dave Lahr: Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) is not only looking a lot shorter than WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) but he also looks a lot smaller in terms of his frame. Cotto looks overall teeny compared to the 29-year-old Foreman. I might dismiss the disparity in this fight under normal circumstances but with the poor 2-2 record that Cotto has in his last four fights, the incredible punishment he’s absorbed in three of them, the way he looked like he wanted to quit in the Joshua Clottey fight, and the rumors of his poor training for this fight, I can’t help thinking that Cotto is in deep trouble against Foreman.

The lack of size is just one more of many problems for Cotto going into this fight. I don’t know who dreamed up the idea for Cotto to move up a weight class and try to fight the much taller 5’11” Foreman for his title, but whoever it is they really are doing a disservice to Cotto. He’s really asking for it in this fight, because the 5’7” Cotto is tiny even for welterweight standards.

Now he’s going to be trying to move up a weight class and take on a quicker, elusive and sneaky fighter like Foreman. I see this as big trouble for Cotto. The last beating he took from Manny Pacquiao was appalling in the savagery. With the shots he took in that fight, Cotto would have been better off moving down to the junior welterweight division to fight some smaller guys rather than moving up a weight class to take on a big fighter like Foreman, who is almost a half foot taller than Cotto. I’ve seen Cotto fight a tall guy like Foreman before and the results weren’t pretty when Cotto was torn apart by Antonio Margarito in July 2008.

Foreman is just as big as Margarito, only sturdier and very dangerous with his head butts. I don’t know how Cotto is going to be able to avoid Foreman’s spearing attacks with his head. I don’t think Foreman purposely acts like a Billy goat, but never the less he tends to run into his opponents head first quite often. It’s going to be pretty brutal to see Cotto getting hammered from the outside by a huge fighter like Foreman and then rammed into head first by Foreman on the inside.

Picture a bloody Cotto by around the 6th round and that’s how this fight is likely going to go. I really hope this wasn’t Cotto’s brilliant idea for him to move up in weight to take on Foreman. At least if it’s someone else, Cotto can blame them and feel a little bit better rather than taking all the blame himself for what appears to be a pretty useless move. Foreman may not be a menacing fighter for the average light middleweight, but Cotto isn’t the average light middleweight. He’s a smaller than average welterweight, who probably belongs more at junior welterweight than welterweight.