By Lyle Fitzsimmons
Come to think of it, the wife really does know best.
Though I’d gone on record a few weeks back saying I was far more irritated that Antonio Margarito was getting a catch-weight title fight than with the idea he was fighting at all, sometimes with age comes wisdom.
Or in this case… living with a smart spouse named Danielle comes wisdom.
Driving back from a fruitless trip to a Gulf beach, a 45-minute chat with my lady of nearly five years – a sports fan with multiple fantasy football championships and one press-row fight credential to her credit, by the way – showed that when it comes to the Tijuana Tornado’s worthiness to return to the sport, one of us had it right all along.
And it sure as heck wasn’t me.
While his Nov. 13 match with Manny Pacquiao at Cowboys Stadium looks destined to end in a fashion similar to his January 2009 meeting with Shane Mosley – it now says here that the Mexican-born ex-welterweight king doesn’t even deserve the chance to get his face kicked in courtesy of the soon-to-be Filipino flyweight turned junior middleweight.
Until getting the female perspective on Monday afternoon, I’d been what amounts to a silent apologist for the man un-affectionately known as “Margacheato,” somehow allowing for a chance he might not have known what happened in the Staples Center locker room prior to the detective work of the ever-vigilant Naazim Richardson.
Now that I look back, it seems more ridiculous by the minute.
As many veteran fighters, trainers, analysts and others insisted since day one of the controversy, there’s really no way a combatant of Margarito’s skill and experience – he’d been a pro for 15 years and 10 days when he met Mosley – would not have noticed even the slightest thing was amiss with the hand wrap done that night by Javier Capetillo.
But because he’d done a good job selling the “who me?” line since being suspended and because the offense was detected before the fight and not after Mosley had been violated physically, I’d been more inclined to give Margarito the benefit of the doubt when it came to his deserved level of punishment for what nearly went on in Los Angeles.
It all changed somewhere around the Marion County line.
“It’s crazy that they’re letting him fight,” I was told by my incredulous passenger during the rare stretch of dialogue allowed by our drowsy 2-year-old, Ryan. “Just because he didn’t actually lay his hands on the guy doesn’t mean there was no intent. And it wouldn’t do a lot of good to only get it right after the fact. It should be treated as if he’d gotten to the ring and hit him.
“If they’d have found it after the fight, he’d rightfully be dragged through the streets.”
My only question after our chat… how did I not recognize it sooner?
The more I ponder what could have happened had it not been for Richardson – and ultimately Mosley – the more I’m reminded of the eerie aftermath of the Luis Resto-Billy Collins tragedy at Madison Square Garden 16 years earlier.
Like Margarito, Resto vehemently claimed to know nothing of what happened in the locker room that night on the Roberto Duran-Davey Moore undercard, when padding was removed from the gloves that beat the overmatched Collins into a medically induced retirement and indirectly led to his untimely death nine months later.
Resto eventually purged his soul in a TV documentary released last year, admitting to both Collins’ and his own family that he’d been aware of the pre-fight malfeasance but chose not to do anything to stop it… an admission that may help him sleep at night, but, were it me in the Collins’ shoes, would have warranted little more than a slammed door in the face.
Just because Margarito didn’t get away with it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a crime.
And just because Bob Arum says it’s OK doesn’t mean he’s any less loathsome for doing so.
As for me, I’m glad there’s at least one person in my house who saw through them both.
Thanks, hon… good catch.
Source: boxingscene.com
