Would a Margarito win be good for boxing?
Absolutely everything is going as planned for Bob Arum and Top Rank. In the dead night of winter with Floyd Mayweather, Arum's solution was to put his white knight, Manny Pacquiao, against his Dark Horse, Antonio Margarito. He foresaw problems getting the bout licensed in Nevada and California, so anticipated events by arranging a meeting with Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, to use his stadium for the bout. Fast forward a week or so and Margarito is licensed to fight in Texas, after paying his mandatory twenty dollars, and a Nov. 13 bout with Pacman is well under way. As I said, everything going as planned.
But what if something weren’t to go as planned?
I can only be talking about Pacquiao suffering defeat.
Remember, Manny Pacquiao isn’t a God (though he may be a Philippine congressman). He can be beat. Witness the two times he was knocked out early in his career, or his 12th round decision defeat at the hands of Erik Morales. Even his controversial first fight with Juan Manuel Marquez, ruled a draw, had many heads turned upwards, wondering what kind of conspiracy could have worked for Pacquiao on that gratuitous occasion.
Going into the Margarito fight, Pacquiao will be heavy favourite. Most analysts will expect him to be able to contend with the aggressive Margarito, if not for the first rounds then later on. Pacquiao can slug, maybe not as hard as Margarito, but he makes up tenfold with his clear speed over Margarito. So many think he’ll end up beating him to the punch all night long, until in the later rounds he can capitalize on the sluggish Margarito and stop him. Heck, if Shane Mosley can do it, Pacman can do it also.
But the thing is, if Pacquiao wins, nothing really changes for the sport of boxing. If Pacquiao has truly come to be known as the sport’s white knight, he’s also come to be identified with a certain degree of dull comfort. The world over knows what fights he considers prospective, and the truth is he’s half of the ugliest deadlock in boxing. If a fight with Mayweather is never going to take form, we also know, as far as Pacquiao is concerned, he’s probably never going to take on the best of the junior middleweight division. The risk would be too great in challenging a legitimate junior middle like Paul Williams or Alfredo Angulo. So with a win, it would merely be another title-as-formality, and going back to the drawing board with Mayweather.
But if Margarito were to win, the entire boxing world would be turned onto its head. First of all, we’d have the incredible situation of the sport’s dark horse trumping the sport’s pound-for-pound guy. He’d also have to be viewed in a new light given the current hand wrap controversy. The point would have to be said: here’s a guy who seriously cheated, was rewarded for it, and managed to beat the top guy. Given that Margarito has shown he can be beaten (most recently by Mosley), how would the boxing world come to accept this victory?
Well, regardless, it would have to. And the fact of the matter is that as a junior middleweight, Margarito stands a lot better competition that Pacquiao. He isn’t stuck into his own limitations, or the handling limitations of Arum. Surely a Paul Williams-Margarito fight would be a winner, and can we even imagine the entertainment of a slug-fest between Margo and Angulo?
All of these possibilities would rejuvenate boxing, while Pacquiao’s value would fall by the wayside. A Margarito win would signal the demolition of a Mayweather-Pacquiao mega-fight, but how long are promoters going to parry the sport to get there?
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