By Dan Ambrose: Emanuel Steward, the former trainer for WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s), feels that the 31-year-old Cotto will have to fight a very carefully planned fight for him to have success in his May 5th match against undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Steward said this about Cotto’s fight with Mayweather during the Sergio Martinez vs. Matthew Macklin telecast last night as quoted by fighthype.com “Well, he’s [Cotto] gotta fight a very specifica style of fighting and really to operate behind a good solid jab and to keep his balance. Whether he fights with his head down, feet too far apart, Floyd will systematically break him down.”

It almost sounds like Cotto is damned if he do, dammed if don’t against Mayweather. Unfortunately, that’s the cold hard facts of the matter. Cotto is so far out of his class in this fight that whatever he does in making planned strategy to try and beat Mayweather, it’ll be be quickly figured out by Mayweather on the fly and he’ll just come up with something to counteract what Cotto is doing. Unless Cotto’s new trainer Pedro Diaz is able to help Cotto come up with adjustments to what Mayweather Jr. is doing in the ring, then this could be a really lopsided win for Mayweather and we could very well see Cotto get stopped again.

Cotto was able to use the skills that Steward taught him in addition to what Diaz taught him to outbox Antonio Margarito in his last fight. However, Margarito appeared to have figured Cotto out by the 9th round and was just then starting to get to him when the ringside doctor called a halt to the fight due to Margarito’s right eye swollen almost completely shut.

I’ve never seen Cotto make any real adjustments before other than running around the ring to avoid getting knocked out by Margarito, Shane Mosley and pacquiao.