Antonio Margarito: Boxing’s portable lie detector

By Bart Barry

Last week MSNBC reported that U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan will soon be equipped with portable lie detectors. Soldiers will use these to determine the veracity of answers given by local police officers, crime suspects and candidates for access to military bases. The devices are hand-held but apparently fallible.

Whatever their shortcomings, these portable lie detectors will have to suffice for a while. At least until the Pentagon figures out how to get those folks in a room with Antonio Margarito for 15 minutes.

That’s all Margarito usually needs. It’s about all the time he needed Saturday night against Kermit Cintron -- in a rematch that bore many similarities to its predecessor. Margarito walked through Cintron’s best right hands early and exposed Cintron’s fragility once more, stopping him at 1:57 of Round 6, to become the IBF’s welterweight champ.

While analogizing Margarito to the Pentagon’s new tool, though, one shouldn’t call Cintron a liar. Both he and trainer Manny Steward seemed genuinely convinced of Cintron’s renovation. After Margarito exposed him as a fragile slugger with an inflated record three years ago, Cintron and Steward worked diligently to stiffen Cintron’s psyche.

Cintron feasted on men of lesser power than his -- and lesser will than Margarito’s -- and convinced himself and others that he was more than he’d been in 2005. With the help of good matchmaking and vigorous promotion, Cintron’s mystique returned to embellished proportions. It was up to Margarito to expose the falsehood.

Margarito’s sensor was tripped the day before the fight. At Friday’s Atlantic City weigh-in, both men looked good on the scale. Then they stood, noses touching, for 10 seconds. Once photographers had their promotional shot, the men separated. The intensity of the moment was too much for Cintron. He turned to Margarito and made a throat-slitting gesture. And without uttering a word, Margarito replied with the most eloquent pre-fight speech of the year.

Margarito began to roll his fists under his eyes like a sobbing infant. It was his first allusion to Cintron’s post-fight breakdown in 2005, and it was timed just right. At once, Margarito razed the illusion of respect he’d been showing Cintron’s transformation: “No matter how ferocious some people now think you are, Kermit, you’re nothing more than the man I broke three years ago in Las Vegas.”

Saturday night came, and Cintron’s ring entrance probably tripped Margarito’s sensor again. After following Steward to the apron, Cintron stepped through the ropes, bounced once and whooped. It was an odd gesture by the usually quiet and serious Puerto Rican. Cintron then paced back to his corner without looking at Margarito. The whoop and averted eyes betrayed a fighter trying to sell readiness to himself.

In the first four minutes, Cintron had Margarito outclassed. Cintron moved well, kept distance and landed his right cross -- probably the hardest punch in the welterweight division. Trouble was, it didn’t faze Margarito. The “Tijuana Tornado” marched forward, closed distance and imposed himself on Cintron.

In the corner between rounds, Steward tried to take what small deposits Cintron had made in his confidence account and leverage them. He told Cintron that Margarito was already tired and sloppy. Cintron nodded, wanting to believe his trainer.

But after the first minute of Round 3, Cintron was the man who fought tired. His chin perilously high, Cintron dropped his lead hand and closed his left shoulder -- like a brittle man’s James Toney. He tried to load up on his right hand, cocking his body and uncoiling it. But Margarito was too wily. He would close Cintron with right hands, step outside Cintron’s lead foot and then reopen him with left hooks.

In the fifth round Cintron’s mind checked-out. Hurt by his inability to stall Margarito’s relentlessness, Cintron began complementing his low lead hand and closed left shoulder with bending at the waist and facing the blue mat. Any fighter who inspects the mat this way looks for a cozy spot to visit -- consciously or otherwise. Undeterred by the back of Cintron’s head, Margarito wacked away.

Cintron began pleading his case to the referee. Never a good sign. It was effective in one way, though: By convincing Earl Brown to warn Margarito about blows to the back of his opponent’s head, Cintron survived the round.

While Cintron’s corner worked on a gash over their charge’s right eye, a ringside doctor took a hard look at Cintron.

“Kermit, you’ve got to talk to us,” he said. “Do you want to continue or not?”

“I’m good,” answered Cintron. “I’m good.”

In the opposite corner, Margarito’s sensor blinked, buzzed and whistled. A lie had been detected. Margarito came out of his corner and went to work. Ninety seconds later, he followed a right cross with a fully committed left hook to the body. Cintron started wincing before the punch completed. Then he went down and stayed down till the fight was over.

Across the ring, meanwhile, boxing’s portable lie detector implored Cintron to rise and fight him some more. He waved his arms and begged Cintron to beat the 10-count. To no avail.

Not long after the ring cleared of Margarito and the remnants of Cintron’s dignity, another lie detector -- this one in the form of WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto -- went off. Facing Alfonso Gomez, a graduate of ESPN’s recently defunct television series, Cotto put the lie to any lingering claims that actual contenders ever fought on “The Contender,” battering Gomez to a merciful fifth-round stoppage.

Now the table is finally set. There should be no impediments to Cotto-Margarito, a fight guaranteed to be sensational. Both fighters are part of promoter Top Rank’s stable, and the winner of their fight will be the de facto welterweight champion of the world. The onus of disproving such an assertion will shift to Floyd Mayweather. Then we’ll see what other lies have been told.