Team Wolak Target Cotto, Bundrage and Chavez Jr.

By Lem Satterfield

Ivan Edwards, the manager of New Jersey junior middleweight Pawel Wolak, would like his fighter's next bout to be against either junior middleweight and middleweight contender, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., WBA junior middleweight king Miguel Cotto, or IBF junior middleweight titlist Cornelius Bundrage, Edwards told BoxingScene.com on Sunday.

"I would like to see him fight Chavez, Cotto and Bundrage," said Edwards. "I would like to see Pawel Wolak in against one of those guys."

The 29-year-old Wolak (29-1, 19 knockouts) is coming off of Saturday night's sixth-round stoppage over 30-year-old Foreman (28-2, eight KOs) that was his second straight knockout, and his fifth stoppage among eight consecutive victories since losing a 10-round unanimous decision to Ishe Smith in August of 2008.

"I felt that Pawel put on a tremendous fight against Foreman. I think that he threw a lot of punches and that he doubled up on a lot of punches and I think that he demonstrated that he's ready to take on some of the best fighters in the world," said Edwards.

"We hope that sometime in the summer or some time in the early fall that he can be in position to fight for a title," said Edwards. "We'd like to fight for a title in his next fight, but we'll have to talk with [CEO] Bob Arum of Top Rank about that."

Wolak was coming off of December's seventh-round stoppage of Jose Pinzon (18-2-1, 12 KOs), against whom Wolak rose from a second-round knockdown of their middleweight match up.

"Pawel's last two fights have been very entertaining. I mean, he's gone into a different mode and has just dominated. In his last fight with Pinzon, he came back from being knocked down and he dominated," said Edwards.

"For this fight with Foreman, he was on him from the first bell. He realized that he was in with a world class fighter, and he took it to another level," said Edwards. "I think that Wolak's at the point in his career where the better the competition, the better he's going to fight."

Pinzon was a replacement on the Tuesday prior to their Saturday night fight for the 25-year-old Chavez Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KOs) after Chavez pulled out with a 103-degree fever.

Chavez is coming off of January's 10-round, middleweight unanimous decision over Billy Lyell (22-9, four KOs), and is in line to face Germany's Sebastian Zbik (30-0, 10 KOs) for the WBC's middleweight belt.

"We don't feel that Chavez is a legitimate middleweight. I don't feel that he really has the strength of a middleweight," said Edwards. "Chavez is the only fight that we would move up to middleweight for," said Edwards. "Wolak is really a junior middleweight, but he could fight Chavez and we think that we could move up and handle Chavez as a middleweight."

Wolak-Foreman was on Saturday night's main event featuring Cotto (36-2, 29 KOs) scoring a 12th-round knockout of ex-champion, Ricardo Mayorga (29-8-1, 22 KOs), this, after Cotto had dethroned Foreman as WBA king by stopping Foreman in the ninth round of their June clash -- the first-ever professional fight to be staged at the new Yankee Stadium in New York.

In August, Bundrage (30-4, 18 KOs) dethroned Cory Spinks as IBF belt holder with a fifth round knockout.

Wolak and Foreman had trained alongside each other at the Gleason's Gym in New York.

In Janurary, Edwards announced that veteran trainer, Tommy Brooks, would assist Wolak's regular corner man, Aroz Gist, for the bout against Foreman, who, at one time, had been trained by Brooks.

Brooks' has worked with Mike Tyson, sibling heavyweight kings Wladimir Klitschko of the WBO, IBF and IBO, his brother, Vitali Klitschko, and also with four-time heavyweight titlist Evander Holyfield.

Brooks also has contributed to the careers of former heavyweight titlist Hasim Rahman as well as world champions Mike McCallum, Johnny Bumphus and Vinny Pazienza.

The 56-year-old Brooks said that he worked "four or five fights" with Foreman, and was last in the corner of Wolak during a Jan., 2010 unanimous decision victory over Ishmail Arvin at Madison's Square Garden's WaMu Theatre.

The win over Arvin was the fifth straight of Wolak's current eight-bout winning streak.

"I've worked with Terrific [Gist] for I don't know how long, and we've done it hand-in-hand," said Brooks the day after being named to work with Wolak. "As a matter of fact, I called him last night and told him exactly what they needed to do to beat Yuri so that they can work on it in the gym."

Foreman suffered a knee injury against Cotto that required successful reconstructive surgery and a summer of rehabilitation before he could return to training and working out in October.

Foreman, who is studying to become a rabbi, became the first Israeli world champion when he dethroned Puerto Rico's Daniel Santos by unanimous decision in November of 2009.

But on Saturday night, Wolak was too much for Foreman.

"I think that a lot of people, coming into the Foreman fight, felt that Pawel was a strong, tough fighter, but that Yuri would out-class him. But in training, they realized that they had to break Yuri down. They had to stay close, break his body down, and then, come back up to the head," said Edwards.

"They worked on all of that -- double-left hooks to the body and coming back up to the head. Right hands to the body and coming back up to the head. I think that Yuri was watching a lot of the old tapes where Wolak's combinations were a little bit more basic," said Edwards. "But Aroz Gist and Tommy Brooks deserve a lot of credit. There was a lot of creativity in training. They were a double-headed dragon. They put the batteries in the kid, and the kid went out there and performed."