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Former WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) has been in several huge wars in the past two years and has lost two out of his last four fights. Next month on June 5th, the 5’7” Cotto will be stepping up in weight to take on World Boxing Association junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) in pursuit of his WBA title at Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, New York. Many people see this as a move for Cotto to get another big money fight against Manny Pacquiao, who stopped Cotto last year in a 12th round TKO in November.
There’s really not much else to help explain the sudden interest in Cotto fighting a little known, non-popular fighter like Foreman. Not only that, the junior middleweight division isn’t a popular one with boxing fans and only has one or two relatively popular fighters in the entire division. There’s really not much point in the short Cotto moving up in weight unless he’s doing it to pick up Pacquiao bait in the form of the WBA title.
Pacquiao is interested in winning an 8th world title and his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank would likely prefer that Pacquiao go after the title against one of his own Top Rank fighters like Cotto – or Foreman – rather than taking on the difficult Martinez. Pacquiao could end up getting beaten by Martinez due to his better movement, good hand speed and bigger size compared to Pacquiao. Foreman and Cotto, however, are much more beatable fighters for Pacquiao and are with the same promotional company, so it’s a win-win fight for Arum. The ideal situation, of course, would be for the much more popular Cotto to beat Foreman and thus setting up a rematch with Pacquiao.
Never mind that their first fight was totally one-sided and filled with few thrills other than watching Pacquiao knock Cotto down a couple of times. It doesn’t matter. The fight would likely bring in at least 1 million pay-per-view buys, a good number for PPV but not necessarily great. Arum would stick the fight at the Cowboy Stadium and sell at least 50,000 tickets again, roughly half of the stadium to watch another hopeless mismatch. However, that fight may never happen if Cotto can’t get past Foreman next month.
The problem is that Cotto has been looking less and less effective in the past two years since his beating by Antonio Margarito and doesn’t seem like the same fighter he used to be. Cotto clearly has the better offensive skills compared to Foreman, but if he’s not able to land his shots against Foreman or if he’s unable to take Foreman’s own punches, it may not matter. It could be that Cotto has taken too much damage in his last four fights and can no longer beat a weak puncher like Foreman. This would really ruin things for Arum if Foreman wins, because there probably wouldn’t be a whole lot of interest for a bout between Pacquiao and Foreman among boxing fans.
To be sure, it would bring in Joshua Clottey like numbers of 700,000 PPV buys, but with Pacquiao on the verge of retirement in a fight or two, I’m sure that’s not the kind of money that Arum is looking for at this point. He would probably want to maximize his profits with the little time that Pacquiao has left and a Foreman-Pacquiao fight wouldn’t be the way to go. A better alternative would be for Arum to pressure Pacquiao into agreeing to take the Olympic style random blood tests that Floyd Mayweather Jr. wants and trying to line up that fight instead of taking a combative role in negotiating the fight. That won’t work, we know that from last time.
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