Cotto will have problems with Foreman’s punch and grab technique

By Jim Dower: Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KO’s) is going to have major problems with WBA light middleweight champion Yuri Foreman (28-0, 8 KO’s) on June 5th. Cotto might have made a big mistake of taking on Foreman. Cotto might have seen Foreman’s low knockout percentage and some of his dull fights, which include a great deal of clinching, and figured that he had an easy mark to pick up a quick title. However, Foreman is anything but easy, especially for a small welterweight like Cotto. This is going to be a huge problem for Cotto to not only figure out a way to deal with Foreman’s side but also his movement and his clinch and grab technique.

Foreman is incredibly tough to fight because he tends to punch and then dive forward and wrap his opponent up in a tight clinch to prevent them from landing anything. Cotto doesn’t like to clinch with his opponents, so it’s going to be interesting to see how he adapts to Foreman’s style. It’s not going to be easy because Foreman tends to dictate the pace of his fights and is hard to hit when he’s moving around on the outside. When he does come at his opponents, it’s usually leading with a left or a fight hand followed by his head. He often rams his opponents with the top of his head and then tags them while they’re still feeling the effects of the head butt.

Cotto will have to somehow try to get his shots off between all that grabbing and holding that Foreman is going to be doing. It’s not going to be easy because Foreman’s style is really hard to adapt to. It’s a style entirely built to shutdown his opponents’ offense to the point where they’re only throwing a trickle of punches. Cotto will have his work cut out for him as it is because he’s going to be a lot smaller than Foreman. Cotto may be the harder puncher, but what good will that do for him if he can’t land his shots. Foreman is going to be tying him up again and again during their fight and Cotto could be lucky if he can do much of anything.

He’ll have a chance if he can hurt Foreman to the body or possibly take him out with a big head shot. However, Cotto is going to have to try and make his punches count as much as possible, because he might not get a lot of chances in this fight without being grabbed and mauled by Foreman. This is really bad timing for Cotto to be moving up in weight and taking on a tough champion like Foreman. Cotto was stopped in the 12th round in his last fight in November by Manny Pacquiao and took a lot of punishment in that fight. It might have been a smarter thing for Cotto to take some more time off or at least fight someone a lot less dangerous than this guy.