Don’t forgive and don’t forget

Last January Mexican welterweight champion Antonio Margarito was caught committing the most heinous of crimes when he was found with a plaster of paris like substance in his hand wraps.

Pleading his innocence and feigning ignorance he stated he did not know they were there but he fooled nobody with his story and the California State Athletic Commission duly banned the disgraced champion for a year.

This Tuesday his suspension was up and he went before the board to re-apply for his license and from the fact that his scheduled fight with Carson Jones is now being touted to take place in Mexico, one can only assume his application was denied.

Good thing too.

I’m not normally in the habit of celebrating when a man is denied the right to put food on his table but with Margarito I will make an exception. If his plan on January 24th 2009 had come off undetected he would have celebrated defeating a future hall of famer as if he had done so cleanly. Mosley is known for being tough so it would not have been a quick knockout he would have had to batter Sugar Shane. And that’s where my problem lies. It also did not bother him, having battered Miguel Cotto into submission the previous summer, that he would do the same to another fighter. It did not bother his conscious that he would potentially endanger a man’s life.

I am under no illusions that he used the illegal hand wraps on Cotto the summer before you just have to look at Cotto’s face after to know that and he intended to use the same illegal hand wraps on Mosley and whoever else he faced and that’s what makes him so dangerous.

Margarito has never once accepted responsibility for his actions and apologised, instead  he still claims his innocence so when reviewing his application I hope the board remembers this.

In an episode of HBO’s 24/7 leading up to the Cotto/Pacquiao fight, Miguel Cotto Sr went into detail on how the fight affected his son claiming he bled from his mouth, nose, eyes and ears. It was more than hard to see Cotto Sr discuss the subject so when reviewing Margarito’s application I hope the board remembers these words.

The whole thing bears more than a passing resemblance to the Billy Collins/Luis Resto episode where Resto used illegal hand wraps as well as removed the padding from his gloves to batter Collins for 10 rounds. In that instance the victim was not so lucky and the whole thing left Collins scarred to the extent that many blame the fight on Collins death a year later, so when reviewing Margarito’s application I hope the board above anything else remembers this and realises the damage Margarito has caused and the potential damage he could have.

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