By Chris Williams: I already can hear the excuses coming from boxing fans of Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) if he loses to junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) this Saturday night at the Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, New York. Cotto’s fans will likely start on the angle that the 5’7” Cotto was too small for the 5’11” Foreman, that he didn’t have enough size to compete with him, and that Cotto would have beaten him had he been three to four inches taller than he is now.

Instead of looking at it for what it is, the third stoppage loss in the last five fights for Cotto, they’ll likely see it as Cotto showing great courage in trying to take on a bigger fighter but not having enough size in the end to compete with the bigger Foreman. I hope these aren’t the excuses that Cotto’s fans pull out of their backsides after he loses the fight, because that’s really weak if you ask me.

Instead of giving Foreman credit for having too talent, power, speed and plain boxing ability, it will come down to him just being the bigger guy in the end. What it will do is give Cotto’s fans hope that he’ll be able to turn it around in his next fight, whoever that ends up being. Since Cotto seems to not be interested in taking things slow in terms of taking a series of tune-ups after suffering terrible beatings from one fighter or another, I suspect that Cotto will continue to be matched against tough opponents that will probably put a hurting on him.

I can sort of see what Foreman of all people was selected for Cotto to fight, because, after all, Foreman isn’t a huge puncher by any stretch of the imagination. He also fights for Top Rank light Cotto, and tends to hit and run a lot. He’s not the kind of fighter that is going to be stalking Cotto all night long like Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao both did in their victories over Cotto.

Foreman will be the exact opposite of those two fighters in that he’ll peck, hold and run. He’ll likely do this over and over again throughout the fight. If Cotto can pin Foreman down, make him fight, then Cotto will likely win the fight. But if Foreman is able to hit and run without Cotto getting enough time to land his power shots, then Cotto will lose the fight by a lopsided score.

It’s a bad match-up for Cotto any way you want to look at this fight, as Foreman isn’t a stationary fighter like the ones that Cotto likes to fight, and he isn’t a stalker that will be coming right at Cotto. This is the kind of opponent that Cotto will have to take the fight to if he wants to beat him. More than that, Cotto will have to actually chase Foreman around the ring in order to beat him.

If you’re familiar with Cotto’s fights in the past three years, you’ll notice a continuing trend in most of his fights where Cotto tires out in the second half of his bouts and begins to take more and more punishment until he either gets stopped or wins by a narrow, controversial decision. Cotto beat both Shane Mosley and Joshua Clottey by close decisions in fights that he had a commanding lead in during the early rounds.