Miguel Cotto can finally take a deep sigh of relief after his dominating performance over Yuri Foreman at Yankee Stadium to claim the WBA super welterweight belt, which was capped off by a technical knockout in the ninth round.

An apparent knee injury hampered Foreman from the seventh round onward. His wife and trainer expressed their concern, which eventually lead his team to throw in the towel during the eighth round.

However, in a bizarre display of compassion for the fans, referee Arthur Mercante Jr. irately threw the towel back out and asked Foreman if he wanted to continue, to which he replied yes. Paula Duffy covers that story in more detail here.

Nonetheless, Cotto was noticeably ahead on the scorecards even before the knee injury occurred in the seventh. Two judges had the bout scored 79-73, while the remaining judge had the fight marked down as 78-74, all in favor of Cotto.

This match-up was a must win for Cotto (35-2, 28 KOs) who was considering retirement if he wasn’t victorious against Foreman (28-1, 8 KOs). Last night’s authoritative demonstration of boxing prowess puts Cotto back in the conversation with the big names in the stacked welterweight division.

Foreman, the rabbi in training and first Israeli ever to win a world boxing title, is far from done with either.

Even though he suffered his first defeat via TKO, he is a magnificent fighter at heart and no one should be surprised to see him competing for another championship in the near future.

In fact, fight fans, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Cotto-Foreman II on the docket for late 2010, early 2011.

MORE: Cotto overcomes Foreman – ESPN

Referee ignores white towel and continues fight – Sports Climax

Re-printed with permission of the author.

Tony Briscoe is a freelance writer who has been published in the Detroit Free Press and BleacherReport.com.

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