Neither California’s revocation of Antonio Margarito’s license nor Bob Arum’s outrage at the state’s ban of the welterweight for at least a year is a surprise.
The state’s athletic commission is doing what it must with a clear and certain message that it won’t tolerate any substance with potential to turn gloved hands into sculpted weapons more deadly than they already are.
Arum, too, is doing what he must in the loyal defense of Margarito, a client who said at a hearing Tuesday that he didn’t know there was something suspicious under his hand wraps before losing to Sugar Shane Mosley on Jan. 24 in Los Angeles.
I don’t agree with Arum. Neither does another one of his clients, Miguel Cotto, who was beaten and left badly bruised last July by Margarito in a Las Vegas stunner. In a telling comment during a conference call a couple of days ago, Cotto expressed widely held suspicions that more than just gauze, skin and knuckles were under Margarito’s wraps.
“We, the boxers, know what’s put in our hands,” said Cotto, who fights Michael Jennings on Feb. 21 in New York in his first bout since his lone loss. “”We know what’s contained in the wraps. Margarito had to know if his wraps had something illegal or not.”
It’s no secret a fighter knows and protects his hands with great vigilance. His livelihood is in their grasp, which is why he often withholds them even in the social exercise of a simple handshake. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you’ve got a rock in your shoe, you know it. At least Michael Phelps didn’t try to say he mistook that bong for a snorkel.
Margarito, whose trainer — Javier Capetillo — also had his California license revoked, could have been more forthcoming. But I suspect that lifting those wraps is a little bit like taking the lid off Pandora’s Box. Perhaps in a year, the controversy will subside and he can re-acquire a license in the United States. But that, too, doesn’t figure to be a procedural slam dunk.
That said, there is a lot to like in Arum’s vociferous defense of Margarito. For one thing, it would be too easy to join the mob that has already kicked the Mexican under the bus and out of the U.S. After all, a lab test of the infamous wraps isn’t expected to be complete until next month.
What’s more, Arum already has the sport’s biggest star in Manny Pacquiao. He could not have been too happy when Margarito upset Cotto just when it looked as if Cotto was on the express elevator to a challenge of Pacquiao’s pound-for-pound perch.
There is already talk about Pacquiao-Cotto. Arum addressed the possibility during the conference call by saying, yes, he would “absolutely” recommend the potential blockbuster.
With Margarito out of the way for now, Pacquiao-Cotto looks a lot closer than it might otherwise. There just doesn’t seem to be much upside in Arum’s defense of Margarito, whose attorney, legal heavyweight Daniel Petrocelli, won a guilty verdict against O.J. Simpson for wrongful death in a 1997 civil trial.
Yet in a Byzantine business crisscrossed by shifting loyalties, there has been no erosion in Arum’s stubborn support of a fighter who has stayed with him. In another conference call Thursday featuring Kelly Pavlik and his middleweight title defense on Feb. 21 against Marco Antonio Rubio in Youngstown, Ohio, Arum argued that Margarito had right to fight and he vowed that he would fight somewhere, perhaps Mexico. He also condemned the California commission almost as if it were a military tribunal ordered by former President George W. Bush to be judge-and-jury for the Al Qaeda suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo.
“This is just California … they think we’re still living under the last administration,” said Arum, who didn’t need to mention John McCain and probably didn’t vote for him.
For McCain, Wrapgate keeps on providing evidence that boxing is in dire need of a federal commission, which Arizona’s senior senator is again pursuing after his failed bid for the White House.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Karen Chapellle of the California attorney general’s office tried to introduce a photograph of the Margarito wraps from his Nevada victory over Cotto into evidence. She contended there were similarities with the Margarito wraps confiscated by California authorities before his loss to Mosley.
But the photo wasn’t allowed. It was called irrelevant. Apparently, what happens in Vegas really does stay in Vegas. I’m not an attorney, but it seems as if a federal commission would eliminate borders, differing regulations and erase a ludicrous ruling that has eliminated evidence that couldn’t be more relevant. Other state commissions are expected to honor the revocation of Margarito’s license, but it is impossible to honor a process that so far is woefully — and perhaps unfairly — incomplete.
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