Margarito Allowed To Face Pac-Man In Texas – Irreparable Damage To An Already Beleaguered Sport?

By James Slater – As fans everywhere now know, disgraced Mexican and former welterweight champ Antonio Margarito has been given the permission by the state of Texas to fight there, against pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao on November 13th. Top Rank boss Bob Arum is delighted, as is the fighter himself, and work in earnest has now begun on setting the under-card for the big event to take place at Dallas Cowboys stadium..

But what do the fans feel about this? Is this the way things should be?

As soon as it was announced how Margarito’s application for the right to box in Texas was approved, we all knew there would be a media backlash. And, check out the web sites today, and you will see how well respected writers such as Kevin Iole and Thomas Hauser have vented their anger and disgust at how a proven cheater – one who could well have inflicted serious and permanent injury on his opponent – has been given the right to not only box again in America, but to earn a staggering amount of money and to fight for a prestigious title in the process. Iole used the word nauseous to describe how the whole thing has left him feeling.

So, the experts – the guys who have been around boxing for such a long time, have spoken and they’ve made their opinions clear. But what about the people that matter the most – the fans. How will they take to the news? A big crowd is expected on November 13th, and it will be hard for fight fans in general, and for fans of Manny Pacquiao in particular, to make a protest by not going to the fight. As much as many people may feel the way to combat further controversial decisions such as this one is by boycotting the fight, how many will actually do so?

And a sell out crowd will give Arum and Margarito the leverage needed to say, ‘hey, the fans have spoken with their feet. They approve the fight, because they are at the fight!’ Some paying customers may well stay away, but at the end of the day, whether they feel the right to box in the U.S that has been given to Margarito is wrong or not, thousands more will be there. What will this say about our sport in general?

The anti-boxing brigade who already want boxing banned will have a field day if the Nov. 13th fight proves to be a huge success at the box office and on pay-per-view (they will have a field day anyway, simply due to the fight being allowed). Already referring to the sport as savage, the critics will claim the fans willing to pay to see a man who attempted (or his trainer attempted) to add illegal substances to his hand-wraps so as to be able to inflict further hurt on a fellow human being, are nothing short of savages also.

Nothing will stop Margarito facing Pacquiao in November, and it doesn’t matter that the Mexican faces an almost certain beating at the hands of the much faster, and harder-hitting warrior known as Pac-Man, but nothing will stop the damage that gets done to our already beleaguered sport, either.

Has the sport now changed that much? Have we entered a dangerous new era where proven cheaters get rewarded so royally? Boxing has always been and always will be a controversial sport, but would what happened yesterday have happened in, say, the 1970s or ’80s?