"I'll always love the false image I once had of you." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." -- Alfred Lord Tennyson
I suppose I should really begin with what I was planning to end with: an apology. There are some times in life when you just allow your heart, or your gut, to rule your head, like when you still secretly fancy a girl who let herself get fat, or worse, when you admit to yourself that you quite fancy your best friend's girlfriend. You're a little ashamed that these things hold true, but since you can't decide who you fancy, what you believe or how you feel, your head has no jurisdiction here.
So here it goes: I'm truly sorry that deep down I remain a reluctant and ashamed Antonio Margarito fan. I know that isn't calculated to make me popular, but there are several reasons for this.
The most obvious of these reasons it simply that I love action fighters: guys who don't back down, guys who seem impervious to the sort of shots that render normal fighters prostrate. I respect and admire the flashy skills of a Roy Jones, or a Prince Naseem Hamed, but I don't love those guys in the same way I love Marvin Hagler, David Tua, or Librado Andrade; guys that (in some cases, Hagler being the most likely exception) don't rely on, or even possess, great boxing skill, but get to where they are/were in the sport based on guts, the ability to absorb punishment and the outright refusal to back down. Who could forget Andrade, ultimately doomed to failure, taking massive amounts of punishment from Mikkel Kessler in one of the most one-sided beatdowns I've ever seen go the distance, but still coming forward, still getting off his stool each round knowing what was to come and yet facing it and refusing point-blank to submit. That was one of the most batshit-crazy displays of hopeless and yet oh-so-admirable courage in the ring I've ever seen.
Which brings me back to Margarito. The first time I was really aware of Antonio Margarito was when I caught Margarito's first fight with Kermit Cintron. I remember all the talk being about Cintron's big straight right, and the assumption seemed to be that this could play out like Hagler/Hearns: if the big right hand landed and the other guy went down then it was over, if it landed and the other guy didn't go down then Mr Straight-Right was in all sorts of bother. Now it goes without saying that Margarito/Cintron was not in the same league as a fight as Hagler/Hearns, but that similarity between the two fights struck me. At this point I had no idea as to the quality of the chin of Margarito. During that fight, however, I began to feel that sense of awe build up, as Margarito chased down Cintron over and over again, and Cintron loaded up some of the biggest shots I've ever seen thrown in the 147 weight class, which Margarito brushed off as if they were so many fly-swatters.
There was one in particular from the middle of the fight which sticks in my mind: Cintron is near the ropes (which doesn't really narrow it down, to be honest, Cintron probably had rope-burns on his back after the fight), and Margarito is just there to be hit, which Cintron wastes zero time in doing, and he couldn't have wound this shot up more had he been mimicking a Roy Jones Jr bolo-punch. This was a shot that looked destined to get Cintron convicted of manslaughter via decapitation, and it landed flush on the chin of the oncoming Margarito. Margarito stopped, and had a slight look of confusion on his face, and for a split second it was unclear exactly what was going to happen next, with the options seeming to be a delayed reaction knockout or a delayed reaction death, and emphasis on the latter. Then Margarito looked up at Cintron, smiled at him, shrugged his shoulders, and just carried on coming. I reiterate that this was probably the single hardest shot I've ever seen landed in that weight class, it landed on the button, and this guy just shrugged it off. Cintron, like Hearns, knew that he wasn't going to break this man, and was broken himself as a result. In that moment as I watched from my living room thousands of miles away, Cintron's career was defined, and a Margarito fan was born. There were many similar moments later on, but nothing that remained quite as indelible as that one shot, nothing that epitomised Margarito more in my mind.
I move on now to the single biggest reason why I am simply unable to forget what Margarito was. I know that in the justified furore surrounding the pre-amble to the Mosley fight, Margarito's reputation has been dredged so firmly through the mud that if it ever makes a re-appearance it could well be fossilized, but I cannot forget what happened the last time he entered the ring before that night. I was a Margarito fan before the Cotto fight, but nowhere near as much as I was a Cotto fan. I loved Miguel Cotto like the Puerto Rican son I have never met, and I dearly wanted to see him beat Margarito. Having seen the Cintron fights, and other recent Margarito efforts, there was no way in my mind that Cotto would stop him, but I expected a one-sided battle with Cotto's speed, movement and skill being the defining factors.
What happened next will live in my memory for ever and a day, and I personally list Cotto/Margarito as my favourite fight of all time. It reminds me of a Formula One Grand Prix that a friend of mine once described to me, where the guy that was leading developed engine trouble, and he was losing about 2.1 seconds a lap to the guy in second, who was approximately 20 seconds behind with 10 laps left. Would he be able to catch up with him, and at that crucial moment, would he be able to overtake him right at the death? The suspense was apparently crazy, and it remains (according to my friend) the most amazing end to a Grand Prix in F1 history. Cotto/Margarito reminds me of that description: Cotto won quite clearly the first six rounds, and then Margarito started to make up ground, and Cotto was beginning to slow down, and it looked for all the world like this was going to be a dead heat on the line, with no-one really sure exactly what was going to happen. I remember calling my friend at the end of the fight, and I was amazed and awed by what I had just witnessed, and my friend could only utter over and over again the word ‘wow' down the phone. After a minute, he composed himself enough to say, "Have I really just seen Miguel Cotto stopped? I can't believe I've just seen Miguel Cotto stopped. Wow." After which he simply hung the phone up. The shock in his voice was palpable, and he still maintains that he thought he was dreaming at the end of that fight.
That war was so perfect, so unbelievably AWESOME, that I refuse to allow it to be tarnished in my memory. I simply refuse. Accusations of glove-loading, while understandable and justifiable to an extent, are simply not going to be given any credence by me when it comes to that fight. It would be like finding out now that Usain Bolt is injecting himself with the stuff Dolph Lundgren gets fond of in Universal Soldier. Nevada issues wraps to the trainers before fights: I hang on to that fact like a lifebelt, and whilst I feel ashamed of the fact I still am a Margarito fan, I can with all clear conscience and no reluctance say that I genuinely believe that he was clean in the Cotto fight. Head and heart are reconciled on that particular issue.
I suppose that one fight has swayed me more on this issue than I should reasonably allow, but if I allow my head to make all my decisions for me then I think I'd lose all my passion and love for the sport. Sometimes you just have to allow yourself some irrational fandom, or so I am now telling myself as justification for my feelings toward Margarito. He now is my boxing equivalent of the girl you know is so bad for you, who you know should be left in the past, but you still secretly want her to call and ask to see you. You can hate her, you can pretend you're deliberating over whether you will accept her invitation to spend a night with her, and you can refuse to admit to anyone else that you actually want to see her again, but there was once something that made you sit up and pay attention when she walked into a room, and even if she cheated on you, if she treated you like shit and even if you know that having her in your life is a really bad idea, you still want her, even if only to know if she still has that ability to make you feel the way you once did, even if really it's the feeling that she once inspired that you crave rather than actually her. I want to see Antonio Margarito fight again, and my gut tells me I want to see all those things once more that made me a fan. I want to see amazing resilience, and guts, and the ability to stare down a rhino, and Margarito once made me feel awe when I watched him fight as a result of his encapsulation of those characteristics. My head wants to see Manny Pacquiao beat the shit out of him, but my gut just wants him to be there, to see if he can produce that feeling of awe one more time.
I suppose it's a similar feeling to that which I get when I tune into yet another Roy Jones dog and pony show. No-one tunes in to see an old faded fighter become a caricature of what he once was, in fact I'd bet my last barrel that every single person watching a Roy fight now is secretly (or not so secretly, maybe) hoping for a renaissance of sorts, of a virtuoso performance the like of which only Roy can produce. We see flashes of what he once was and it revives old memories, and hits the die-hard in their gut: this is what we associate with this particular guy, and this is why we tuned in. Now I understand that there are two major flaws with this comparison between Roy and Margarito, namely that Roy is flair to Margarito's brawn, and also that Roy never got caught with dodgy wraps, but I'm mainly trying to describe that feeling of nostalgia, the prospect of which keeps you coming back.
I recently had a long discussion over a couple of jars with a friend of mine on the Margarito wrap issue. I maintain that the facts, as they are presented to us, the paying public, do not add up. There are simply things that I do not agree can reasonably make sense when presented the way they are. I'm not going to go into this too much now, as this is not a defence of Margarito, and I don't even believe that the discrepancies as they stand represent a defence of any kind, they just muddy the waters. But one thing I will say is that I stated at the time of the fall-out that I do not believe that every fighter is aware every time of every single thing that goes on with his wraps during wrapping. I said that when my own hands were wrapped, I didn't look, in fact I looked anywhere else, talked to someone else, whatever. I don't like having my hands wrapped, and as a result I did anything other than look carefully at what was going on. I was largely ridiculed for saying that, and I even came off doubting my own assertions, if I'm honest. The Pat Burns quote in the recent Hauser article on the issue made me realise that even if I am in the wrong (I don't believe I am), I'm certainly not on my own: "Some fighters don't pay attention when their hands are being wrapped. They're listening to music or talking to someone or watching a television monitor. And even if they're watching, they're not wondering what's in the knuckle pad. If I wanted to put a few layers of hardened gauze inside a fighter's knuckle pads, I could and the fighter would never know." Several other major and respected trainers also say similar things, and recognize the possibility that a fighter might not know if a suspect knuckle pad were inserted.
Jeremy Clarkson (for those of you that don't know who Clarkson is, let me describe him for now as the undisputed King of Awesome) wrote an article a while back about two people driving a car which belonged to them both (husband and wife, that kind of thing). He said that it had become common practice for such couples to simply say that they did not know who was driving if/when a speeding ticket came through, and since the court then couldn't fine either of them without reasonable doubt that it could have been the other, it fined neither. The British legal system, in its infinite wisdom, then decided to pass a law that if it could not be determined who was driving, then both drivers were to be charged with a charge akin to perversion of the course of justice, or obstruction of the law, or something similar. Since this charge was more severe than the speeding rap, couples in this position would have to essentially flip a coin to decide who was guilty of the original charge in order to prevent them both being charged with something else. Clarkson proposed a couple of issues with this, one being that this meant that in 50% of cases in which the couples genuinely did not know who was driving, and therefore flipped the coin to see who would take the rap, someone was being wrongfully convicted of a crime. His major issue, though, was summed up in the sentence: "It has now been ruled that it is a crime to NOT know something." Essentially, you can now get a criminal record for actually not knowing who was driving. This is the sentence that keeps on playing round and round in my head whenever I think about the Margarito case, and keeps me (for now, at least) from absolutely giving up on him. I keep on asking myself: what if he really didn't know? I think there is a chance that he didn't, and just like those couples should not be subject to criminal charges (I mean, there is something to be said for innocent until proven guilty, right?), the fact that there is some (your mileage may vary) doubt as to his guilt, especially when considering the Hauser article and the quotes therein, is it right to essentially punish him for not knowing something? I mean, seriously, what if he genuinely didn't know?
Again, this is not a defence of Margarito, as I do not necessarily believe him to be innocent. It's just that with that much doubt, which is supported by my own experience and also the words of Steward, Roach and Richardson, among others, I can't reconcile the idea that he is definitely guilty as charged, either. Part of the Manny Steward quote reads as follows: "In a situation like this, it's definitely possible that a trainer could put an insert in the knuckle pad without the fighter knowing." That quote in itself is enough for me to have doubts as to the guilt of the man concerned, and as Hauser suggests, a fighter's career (or anyone else's, for that matter) should not be subject to censure or termination based on "guesswork". So while I accept that probability dictates Margarito is guilty, I also acknowledge his right to carry on his career while there is any doubt at all as to his involvement. Better one guilty man go free than one innocent man is hanged, and all that.
All that said, the evidence as I see it points toward Margarito being a cheat, as much as I refuse to condemn him absolutely as being one. I am yet to see one report of a bust-up between himself and Javier Capetillo, for one thing. Were I in his position and my trainer made a decision without my knowledge that cost me millions of dollars in lost earnings, resulted in my reputation and my legacy being dragged through the mud, and meant that my name would forever be synonymous with cheating in sport, then said trainer would be visiting a hospital for a stretch. Margarito doesn't exactly seem the reticent sort either, in fact he seems like a nasty piece of work, so why no backlash? Why is Capetillo still walking around without a care in the world? I'm not endorsing out-of-the-ring violence here, but it does seem strange to me that there seems to have been practically zero consequence for Capetillo except his inability to work in the United States. Not even the prospect of legal action against him? If only more people were as forgiving as good old Antonio.
It's also interesting to me that at the time, I remember writing something along the lines of "if only Margarito would come out and look a camera straight on, and say something like I didn't do it!!" Until the hearing in California, I had not once read or heard anything from Margarito that proclaimed his innocence. As a fan, I wanted to hear him scream from the bloody heavens that he was set up, that this was all a massive injustice, that he had done nothing wrong. Instead I was treated to silence, and third hand stories from Bob Arum, from Capetillo's lawyers, from ‘anonymous sources', but nothing at all from the man I most wanted to hear something from. My feeling at the time could be summed up as "Say it ain't so, Toni? (Please, Toni, please say it ain't so? Toni? Toni?)"
Even now the stuff coming out from Top Rank and all the Margarito-oriented press-type crap surrounding the upcoming bout with Pacquiao never includes anything that refers to the wraps, and I'm still waiting for Margarito to come out and say something publicly about it. It's as if Big Brother is an Antonio Margarito fan and has nipped down to the Ministry of Truth and removed the whole incident from the annals of history, as far as Top Rank and Margarito himself are concerned. I know damn well that were I in his position, and I was being rapped across the world for something I was innocent of (if he is, in fact, innocent) then I would be kicking up the biggest stink ever. Lawsuits against anyone casting aspersions on my character, legal action to prove it wasn't my blood on the insert (a key point in the case, as Hauser wrote), legal action against Capetillo, open and frank statements declaring my innocence, the works. Instead we have.... nothing.
And this causes all sorts of unrest in me, as a fan of the man I once saw destroy Miguel Cotto, the man I thought indestructible even if he wasn't very good. I wanted then, and still want now, to know one way or the other. I want to know 100% whether I should be hating on the guy or whether he is being vilified without just cause. I want to know if I can still remember those days of him cutting a swathe through the welterweights with awe, or with an asterisk predominant over the exact nature of those wins. I remember Antonio Margarito as he was in the Cotto fight, and I still feel awe. I want to know if I should be ashamed of that awe, or whether I should let it stand alone, allowing it to endure despite my reservations.
I remember when I was a kid and people (kids in the playground, my uncles, et al...) used to talk about who was ‘hard': as soon as someone mentioned Mike Tyson everyone just shut up. I remember seeing photos of Margarito after the Cotto fight, shades on, fist raised, looking like a badass and a real man's man, and I remember the fan-worship I felt for him was akin to that. I remember it so well that I almost feel it now, writing these words, but not quite, because I can't respect him now after all that has gone on since. I don't respect his refusal to defend his case, in this case silence is not golden, it's more rusty copper with shit-stains down the front.
Despite all this, I remember fondly the Cotto/Margarito fight, which as I said is the best fight I've ever seen, and I remember the feelings that inspired in me at the time and since. I also factor my doubts regarding his guilt, as small and overwhelmed as they are, into the equation. And when I do, I can't help being a little bit glad, deep down, that Antonio Margarito is coming back to the big-time.
And for that, I'm genuinely sorry.
Source: http://www.badlefthook.com
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