08.12.06 – By Scoop Malinowski: No, it was not the most spectacular performance of Antonio Margarito’s career. But let me tell you something. There have been many, many great fighters who have had these types of – shall we say – sub-par matches during their careers.
Lennox Lewis had Zelkjo Mavrovic. Evander Holyfield had Bobby Czyz. Mike Tyson had Mitch Green and James Tillis. Roberto Duran had Kirkland Laing and Zeferino Gonzalez. Julio Cesar Chavez had Dwight Pratchett and Rocky Lockridge. And the artist LeRoy Neiman told me, Rocky Marciano, shortly before the first Roland LaStarza fight, had a totally ordinary outing – against a man whose name he has forgotten.
But no matter how flawed or vulnerable some critics want to say Margarito looked against a very formidable yet little-known Joshua Clottey on December 2nd, nothing in the world can erase the fact that we saw Floyd Mayweather stuttering and stammering almost incoherently in those youtube videos at the mere mention of the name ‘Antonio Margarito..’
Nothing in the world can hide the truth that Floyd Mayweather has now used – not just one – BUT 16 different excuses and reasons to duck a fight with Antonio Margarito.
These truths still exist. And nothing in the world can hide or kill these truths.
Margarito’s manager Sergio Diaz admitted Antonio himself was dissatisfied with how he battled Clottey.
“Tony’s feeling good but he’s hurt. He hurt his right hand around the wrist area and he re-injured his ankle which he hurt during camp. So it blew up again from putting all that weight on it. It was a tough fight. Tough fight. We knew Joshua Clottey was tough. Some people told us it wouldn’t be a hard fight but we knew it would be. It was 12 hard rounds.”
“Tony right now is going to the doctors. He needs to stay off the ankle for a while. If not, he’ll re-injure it.”
“He did feel disappointed after the fight. He’s used to going in there and taking care of business, knocking ’em out. So Tony was a little disappointed. His trainer (Javier Capetillo) got on him a little bit. I watched the fight again and when I did I felt better. There were a couple of flaws that we need to work on but, personally, I wasn’t so disappointed. Everybody knows Tony is a slow starter. But in the fight he always kept coming, he always kept coming on.”
“And that was our first fight in ten months. And don’t forget, our last fight ten months ago was only 74 seconds. Training in the gym is not the same as being in the ring, with people cheering, and feeling the pressure of having to defend your title.”
“Tony was disappointed, especially with the trainer getting on him. But Clottey is a tough, tough fighter. I told Tony, some very, very tough fighters have come from that part of the world (Ghana, Africa) – like Azumah Nelson, Ike Quartey.”
Clottey said hitting Margarito was like hitting a concrete wall.
“Clottey told us after the fight that after the 5th round I knew I couldn’t do anything (to Margarito), it was like hitting a rock. I said, Tony said the same thing about you. I could feel the skull and the bone with my punches but this guy isn’t going down. Tony said this guy was a warrior.”
Diaz agreed that sometimes top fighters don’t always have the type of high quality efforts that measure up to the set standard of previous performances of excellence.
“It happens to the best. That’s what I told Tony. It happens to everyone, it happens to Mayweather, Oscar, Hopkins, Jones, it happens to them all. We still won. Now look forward to the future and get ready for whatever is next.”
Margarito will arrive back in Mexico on Friday and Diaz hopes he will take the month of December off. But, Margarito, warrior that he is, “is already thinking about running on Monday. He says he’s been eating ice cream and cakes, ‘I feel so fat. I need to run already.'”
As for the future of Margarito, we’ll have to wait and see. Diaz says Shane Mosley doesn’t want to fight Margarito, using the ‘Uhm, we can’t do business with Bob’ excuse. But then Arum revealed last week that Mosley, through a third party, expressed interest of a fight with Miguel Cotto, also promoted by Arum.
Paul Williams is Margarito’s mandatory, but Diaz says that Williams is under some kind of illusion that he’s going to make millions to fight Margarito, like Floyd was offered ($8 million). But that isn’t going to happen. When Williams becomes the WBC mandatory, as is rumored, will he still want to fight Margarito for perhaps under six figures?
Suddenly Miguel Cotto has expressed interest to fight Margarito after he watched the Clottey fight, though, Diaz says, Cotto previously did not want to fight Tony.
As far as how Floyd now feels about fighting Margarito possibly in 2007, who cares what he says or thinks.
We already saw the reluctance, we already saw the stuttering and stammering in those videos. We already heard all the double talk of excuses and reasons.
The heat got too hot and Floyd already folded his cards in the Margarito poker game. Let’s all just hope for the sake of the integrity of boxing that Floyd does not become a partner of Golden Boy a month after Cinco de Mayo. That wouldn’t smell very well, would it?
Then the pound for pound most protected fighter would really have it his way, even more than now.
Contact Scoop: Mrbiofile@aol.com