Boxer Cotto back on top after Yankee Stadium brawl

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Every time that Miguel Cotto was asked whether he was finished, so many savage fights having taken their toll, he would answer simply that his training was going well and he was ready to step back into the ring.

He may have been avoiding an uncomfortable question, but after an emphatic victory over Yuri Foreman on Saturday night, Cotto may have just been telling the truth.

“We worked on a lot of things we did tonight, and I think everything showed,” Cotto said in the bowels of Yankee Stadium, with his Hall of Fame trainer Emmanuel Steward looking on. “It’s like Emmanuel said right after the end of the fight, ’You’re back. Miguel Cotto is back.’ ”

Which begs the question: Did he ever really go anywhere?

Cotto (35-2, 28 KOs) was quickly dismissed after a pair of losses to Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao, but critics forget he fared well most of the way against the Margarito. Many people now question the legitimacy of the fight, too, after Margarito was found with loaded hand wraps before a later fight against Shane Mosley.

As for Pacquiao, well, just about everybody is getting destroyed by him these days.

“Miguel, he has shown himself to be very resilient,” promoter Bob Arum said. “He didn’t give up after the Pacquiao fight. He came back. He got Emmanuel Steward, I think there was a big improvement, and he is entitled to do fights where he makes the most possible money.”

That could mean any number of things, from defending his new 154-pound title — he looked perfectly comfortable at the higher weight — to moving back to welterweight.

Either way, a rematch with Margarito seems natural.