By William Mackay: The boxing world is pretty much in rapture over Miguel Cotto’s 9th round TKO win over Yuri Foreman last Saturday night at Yankee Stadium. Fans, and sportswriter’s alike, are practically crowning Cotto the king of the junior middleweight division based on this one win over a fighter that injured himself in the 7th round when his right knee gave out on him. It’s easy to fall in line with the fans and sportswriters that are crowing about how good Cotto looked but you have to take a second and separate yourself from the pack and use a little critical thinking for a change.

Who did Cotto just beat? Foreman is a fighter whose best wins of his career were against a rusty and weight drained Daniel Santos, Anthony Thompson and Andriy Tsurkan. That’s pretty much the extent of Foreman’s experience against recognizable fighters. Those are good B level fighters, but are they really the kind of fighters that would make you think that Foreman is the real deal based on those wins alone?

Face it, Cotto fought someone one Saturday night who had very little experience at all and who came into the fight with a bad knee. That’s not exactly a fighter that would have much chance at beating an experience guy like Cotto on paper. And that when you look at the fact that Foreman can’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag, it tells you that this fight wasn’t what it appears. And on top of that, both Cotto and Foreman share the same promoter Bob Arum.

Under normal circumstances, Cotto would likely never fight a guy like Foreman with his lack of experience. Cotto only fights named fighters and Foreman didn’t fit in that category going into this fight. Cotto, if he fought for a different promoter, would have likely gone after the bigger name among the current junior middleweight champions and that’s Sergio Martinez, not Foreman.

All that Foreman had going for him is that he was promoted by the same promoter as Cotto. As such, we see Cotto facing a junior middleweight champion who had almost zero experience against top level fighters. The fact that a lot of boxing fans and writers were giving Foreman a good chance of beating Cotto going into their fight is more of an indication of how badly Cotto has been struggling in the past two years then it’s any kind of indication that Foreman has been shining in any real way. Foreman has been doing well, but doing good against fringe contenders, apart from his win over the rusty and weight drained Santos.

I think it’s way too early to know whether Cotto is back to where he once was two years ago before his beating from Antonio Margarito. Cotto needs to be matched against a proven top contender and/or champion before we know if he still has it. I’d like to see Cotto in with Alfredo Angulo or Margarito to see if he still has what it takes. If Cotto can beat both of those guys, then I’m a believer in him. I then wouldn’t mind seeing Cotto face Pacquiao in a rematch, although I think Cotto will lose that fight just as easily as he did the first time they fought.