ARLINGTON, Tex. – There was a time when Antonio Margarito was my favorite story in boxing. He was humble, friendly, kind to fans and writers, and willing to absorb copious abuse to prevail. The night he defeated Miguel Cotto at MGM Grand remains a highlight of my time in boxing. But Saturday night, at about 10:20, I realized I don’t like the man anymore.
When the opening bell rang and I saw how much larger he was than Manny Pacquiao, my stomach tightened unexpectedly because at any moment in the next 36 minutes, Margarito might hurt Pacquiao. He might win. And I discovered a Margarito victory was a possibility that repulsed me.
Saturday at Cowboys Stadium, Filipino Manny Pacquiao did not allow Mexican Antonio Margarito to prevail. He clipped him, cut him, closed his eyes and whupped him. The judges scored the match 120-108, 118-110, 119-109 for Pacquiao. I had it 120-109, scoring 10 rounds for Pacquiao, with rounds 6 and 8 even.
Before you scoff at scoring anything for Margarito, consider what Pacquiao said about the sixth, in the post-fight press conference.
“I’m lucky to have survived that round.”
When have you ever heard Pacquiao say something like that?
It was a subdued conclusion to a night that was weird. The return to Cowboys Stadium went not as hoped. Attendance was announced at 41,734 – though we’ll not know the actual number till the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation reports on gate receipts. Still, that was 10,000 fans fewer than was announced for Pacquiao’s March fight with Joshua Clottey. It was 19,000 fans fewer than we’d been told to expect all week.
And while Pacquiao-Clottey was a subpar performance in a remarkable edifice, Pacquiao-Margarito was a remarkable performance in a subpar edifice. Cowboys Stadium, a billion dollars later, had no reliable WiFi; Ethernet cords abounded – just like 1998. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, ubiquitous in March, was hard to find all week.
The home team goes 1-7, in other words, and everyone, from the owner to the bus driver, stops caring about details.
I spent much of Saturday’s undercard on the East Side Plaza, asking Mexican fans about their unceasing loyalty to Margarito even after his 2009 banishment for wearing tampered-with inserts in his hand wraps. They almost had me convinced. Then allegations of ephedra use exploded from Margarito’s dressing room during Saturday’s undercard.
One camp said it was Hydroxycut – a dietary supplement that once contained the banned stimulant ephedrine. The other camp said that it was Splenda, a no-calorie sweetener, Margarito sprinkled in the four cups of coffee he drank in his dressing room. Though it was ultimately an irrelevance, it merits treatment.
The ECA Stack – comprising ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin – is more common in boxing gyms than you think. It is a powerful appetite suppressant that takes a remarkable effect on the central nervous system. Ephedrine races your insides while sending a signal to induce drowsiness. Caffeine ensures that signal never arrives at your brain. Aspirin, meanwhile, thins the blood to increase the duration of the stimulus. A fighter who used it to cut weight in training camp could easily become enchanted by its effect on hand-speed, timing and stamina.
It cannot make you a better fighter. But it can make you a more resilient one – with only a small chance of cardiac arrest.
And so my stomach tightened at ringside late Saturday night. To see Margarito’s size advantage and imagine it leavened with artificial speed and courage was hard to bear.
Margarito’s unofficial advantage was 17 pounds of weight and 4.5 inches of height. It was much more than that, though. Pacquiao is a 140-pound man who couldn’t weigh 160 after a sedentary month of rapacious grazing at a Las Vegas buffet. Margarito is a 190-pound man who, one way or another, weighs less than 150 pounds for a few hours of every year.
Oh, but size isn’t that important. Skill is. Combination punching is. Quickness and accuracy are. Right, right and right. But if size doesn’t matter, what was that scale doing at Cowboys Stadium, Friday?
When you are the much smaller man, see, every punch must be thrown with knockout power. In order merely to keep the larger man off him, a smaller fighter must forsake range-finding punches and deliver each blow with complete commitment. And that is positively exhausting. Even for Manny Pacquiao.
An hour after Saturday’s fight, in a makeshift media area under Cowboys Stadium, Pacquiao was spent. This post-fight press conference was not the celebration others have been. Pacquiao said it was the hardest fight of his career. What he didn’t say, perhaps because he’s gracious, was that Margarito was the least-skilled prizefighter Pacquiao has faced in a championship match. Indeed, size mattered.
After cracking the orbital bone under Margarito’s right eye early in the fight and almost stopping the Mexican in round 4, Pacquiao was astonished to be hurt by him in the sixth. Margarito pinned Pacquiao to the ropes and hit him with sustained punches for the first time. Margarito dipped into his well of resentment – a disrespected Tijuana club fighter made good – and tried to break Pacquiao.
But for once, Margarito faced a man with a deeper well of difficult experiences from which to summon fortitude. Take that, marry it to once-in-a-generation speed and power, and well, you have something pretty special there.
So, thank you, Manny, for being the purest embodiment of what we love about prizefighting.
And now, say goodbye to us. The risk-reward ratio is all wrong for you, as you realized Saturday night: To make big purses you have to fight men who are too big. There is nothing left for you to do to burnish your legacy. There is nothing more for you to give to boxing but a happy ending.
It’s now time to retire a legend, wits and fortune intact, and serve your people in a more meaningful way.
Bart Barry can be reached at bbarry@15rounds.com. Additionally, his book, “The Legend of Muhammad Ali,” co-written with Thomas Hauser, can be purchased here.
