We?re not exactly looking at a barren boxing calendar for the remainder of 2011. Over the next 11 Saturdays, there are 10 fight cards on either Showtime, HBO, or HBO Pay-Per-View. Four of the top five pound-for-pound fighters will be in action. There are eight different bouts remaining that I would categorize as having ?Fight of the Year potential? (including a rematch to the fight that is currently the frontrunner for the award).
So it is not an empty compliment when I declare that I?m looking forward to the December 3 Antonio Margarito-Miguel Cotto rematch more than any other boxing match between now and the end of 2011.
On the spectrum of sporting-events-as-occasions-for-rubbernecking metaphors, Margarito-Cotto II is a gruesome 10-car pileup in which it turns out all 10 cars were being driven by topless strippers. When the road is littered with smashed fenders, broken glass, and half-naked women, maybe you don?t feel good about slowing down to look, but you?re damned sure going to anyway.
Unquestionably, there are more important fights on the 2011 calendar. Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez is the third installment of an all-time-great rivalry between two future Hall of Famers. Bernard Hopkins-Chad Dawson is for a lineal championship. So is this weekend?s Sergio Martinez-Darren Barker fight. Margarito-Cotto II is by no means insignificant; Cotto is probably the number-one guy in the wide-open junior middleweight division at the moment, and he?s a fringe candidate for a P4P ranking. Still, compared to Pacquiao-Marquez III, Hopkins-Dawson, and Martinez-Barker, who wins and who loses in the Margarito-Cotto fight doesn?t carry historical weight.
