Cotto and Foreman battling for Emanuel Steward's help
by Scott Christ on Mar 25, 2010 5:43 PM EDT
in Boxing News Analysis
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In mid-February, it appeared as though Yuri Foreman and his team had reached a firm deal to work with famed trainer Emanuel Steward as Foreman prepared for his big June 5 title defense against Miguel Cotto. Steward wasn't going to train Foreman, but work with the fighter for a couple of weeks as a consultant.
Today, that doesn't appear so set in stone, and in fact, it's getting very interesting. Rick Reeno of BoxingScene.com reports today that both Foreman and Cotto are battling for Steward's services. The report says that Foreman's manager Murray Wilson believes that Steward has been offered the role of head trainer for Cotto's camp, with Joe Santiago returning to an assistant role.
We've discussed Manny Steward's status as a top trainer (or not) recently on the site in comments, discussing whether or not Steward could help Kelly Pavlik, how he's done with Wladimir Klitschko (excellent, obviously), and other jobs he's had in recent years (Kermit Cintron, Jermain Taylor, etc., which didn't go as well as Wladimir has).
Steward is known mostly for making tall guys fight like tall guys. Not only is Cotto (5'7") not tall for a welterweight, he's going to be a miniature junior middleweight, while Foreman is a standard sized 154-pounder at about 5'11". Foreman will also have a five-inch reach advantage. Frankly, I thought bringing in Steward as a consultant made a ton of sense for this fight on Yuri's side. He'll want to use his height and reach, which Manny is great at refining.
But Cotto? To me, it seems the best thing for Miguel in this fight would be to get inside and bang to the body, or in other words, return to the old Miguel Cotto style, which has been lost a bit recently. He didn't even really use that style against Margarito, so you can't even argue that that questionable fight hurt that part of Miguel's game.
And that's never been Steward's bread-and-butter as a trainer. I'm not saying he can't teach or coach that, but there are better and cheaper options to work with Miguel on getting that back, aren't there? On the surface, it seems like hiring Earl Weaver to manage a team built for small ball, or like putting Bill Cowher in charge of the "Greatest Show on Turf"-era Rams.
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Hmm
On the surface, it seems like hiring Earl Weaver to manage a team built for small ball, or like putting Bill Cowher in charge of the “Greatest Show on Turf”-era Rams.
Or like having Rich Rodriguez coach a team full of big, physical players in an area where the best recruiting is for corn-fed types.
Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."
hey, we're going national with recruiting!
Bad Left Hook
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day..."
by Scott Christ on Mar 25, 2010 5:52 PM EDT up reply actions
…not that we weren’t national before…
The real idea is that Rodriguez’s offense can actually get some fast guys to come to Michigan.
Bad Left Hook
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day..."
by Scott Christ on Mar 25, 2010 5:52 PM EDT up reply actions
It's worked so well so far
Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."
Hey, he’s getting the fast guys. Lloyd Carr never gets most of these guys. Lloyd Carr goes 8-4 every year and we all start getting bored. Honestly it’s almost exactly like the RC Slocum thing at Texas A&M. They were good every year, sometimes had a national title contender or at least what kind of looked like one, but usually it was 9-2, 8-3 type stuff, and the A&M fans started demanding more than that. A&M might not have fully grasped that what Slocum was doing there was pretty amazing, and Michigan fans probably didn’t fully grasp that this isn’t 50 years ago, and there’s a lot more competition than there used to be, and that we should probably be happy with being a proud program that always competes and when the stars align, might truly contend.
But we’re not happy with that and now we’ve got Rich Rodriguez, and we’re trying to be patient but there’s a pretty strong undercurrent building up.
Bad Left Hook
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day..."
by Scott Christ on Mar 25, 2010 9:16 PM EDT up reply actions
There was a time when hiring Pat Riley to coach a thuggish foul-prone defense-oriented team would have seemed absurd. So you never know.
But I agree that this doesn’t seem like a great idea.
Cotto didn’t go to the body much vs. Mosley either. I think the last time we saw that Cotto was against Zab.
There was a time when hiring Pat Riley to coach a thuggish foul-prone defense-oriented team would have seemed absurd. So you never know.
Ooh, good point.
Cotto didn’t go to the body much vs. Mosley either. I think the last time we saw that Cotto was against Zab.
Zab and against Michael Jennings, who never had a shot and Miguel knew it, so he mostly just did what he wanted to. He seems almost gun-shy to go to the body lately. Shane I can believe worked to specifically neutralize Cotto’s body attack, but then you have:
1. Clottey, who is hittable to the body
2. Margarito, who’s never really tried to neutralize anything in his career
3. Pacquiao, who is Pacquiao so who knows
Bad Left Hook
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day..."
by Scott Christ on Mar 25, 2010 6:01 PM EDT up reply actions
I think that Foreman hiring Steward makes masses of sense
It would probabaly mean him getting a fairly wide points decision over Cotto in a not very exciting match with lots of jabs.
I agree that Steward is not a very good trainer choice for someone like Cotto.
I wouldn’t be suprised if Pac turned out to be the incredible hulk in a very good disguise. - Sigidy
Cotto and Steward doesn’t make any sense to me. He will need to get inside a rough up Foreman and thats not what he excels at as a trainer. Yuri wont turn out like a mini Wald with Stewards help tho, he doesn’t hit hard enough and someone will break through his jab and work him on the inside with out a strong right hand to keep them out
"It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up." - Ali
I think Cotto might be discouraged by a Yuri Foreman jab pumping at him non-stop. He’s going to be a lot smaller than Foreman. After six or seven rounds of Foreman snapping a jab on him when he tries to move in, he might all but give up.
Bad Left Hook
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day..."
by Scott Christ on Mar 25, 2010 9:17 PM EDT up reply actions
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