By Jim Dower: According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, former World Boxing Association junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-1, 8 KO’s) is going to be having surgery performed on him to remove torn cartilage from his right knee, which was injured in the 7th round of his 9th round TKO loss against Miguel Cotto (35-2, 28 KO’s) last Saturday night at Yankee Stadium, in New York. The surgery will be performed on Friday of this week, Rafael says. Foreman will have the surgery done in New York at the NYU Medical Center. His ACL will be rebuilt, which should in theory leave Foreman with a much stronger knee in the future.

However, Foreman has been walking around with his knee injury for years since he initially injured it at 15 and there’s a question whether arthritis has already started. For untreated injuries like that, arthritis often develops after a number of years. Also, with the cartilage being removed, it could leave Foreman’s leg less than strong because it could have bone on bone where the cartilage has been removed.

Foreman’s knee should be better off than it was before surgery, but it might not be anywhere near what his knee once was before he injured his knee. It’s going to take Foreman a lot of rehabilitation to strengthen his knee even under the best of circumstances. He’s a fighter that depends on his movement to keep him out of trouble in his fights. If his knee isn’t as strong as before, he could be grounded in his fights and as vulnerable as he was in the 7th after he aggravated his old injury.

Foreman will miss six months of action while he recovers from the knee surgery and that’s if everything goes alright. Foreman could reinjure his knee later on if he’s not really careful. He’ll likely continue to wear his customary knee brace when he fights to give the knee some added strength. This is advisable but it may also prevent the knee from getting stronger if he wears the support all the time.

However, initially he’ll little choice but to wear the brace to support his knee. The doctor is saying that Foreman will be able to throw with more power once his knee is fully recovered. That may or may not happen. The doctor is talking about the best case scenario for Foreman.

There’s also a good chance that Foreman’s knee will continue to be weak, continue to hurt and continue to cause problems for him that will prevent him from moving well and sitting down on his punches. After all, this is an injury that Foreman has been walking around with for the past 14 years. This all didn’t just happen last Saturday night. Foreman may have torn more of the cartilage but he’s been walking around with the untreated injury for years.