Antonio Margarito making a comeback, possibly with Top Rank

By Boxing News - 10/29/2015 - Comments

margarito34By Tim Fletcher: 37-year-old former IBF/WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (38-8, 27 KOs) will be staging a comeback to the sport after four years in retirement. Margarito reportedly went through a costly divorce, according to ESPN, and he’s got the desire to restart his career.

Whether his interest in coming back to boxing is related to his divorce is unclear. Margarito wants to go back with his old promoter 83-year-old Bob Arum of Top Rank. However, Margarito is asking for a lot of money for his initial comeback fights, and they’re going to need to agree on a different price for him if he’s to sign on with Top Rank.

“Tony says he’s returning. He says he is,” said Arum via ESPN.com. “He has crazy notions of the money he’s worth. We know we can’t put him in with a killer right away. He has to get the rust out. But his eye is OK. I made sure he got a clean bill of health.”

The idea is to have Margarito take a couple of tune-up fights on Unimas and then put him in a big fight. Who knows what Arum would have in mind for a big fight? Margarito likely is too big to squeeze down to 147 at his age. Margarito has been checked out by a doctor and given clearance to return to the ring. The doctor examined his eye and he’s given the green light to continue.

It’s unclear what “killer” Arum could match Margarito up against, because Top Rank doesn’t have any quality junior middleweights in their stable. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez from Golden Boy Promotions likely won’t be interested in fighting Margarito. Miguel Cotto probably won’t be interested in a third fight with Margarito.

It’s possible that Arum could look to match Margarito with one of his welterweights like Brandon Rios, Tim Bradley or against light welterweight Terence Crawford. I wouldn’t call any of those fighters “killers” or anything close to that.

Crawford is a good fighter at 140, but we don’t know whether he’ll be the same fighter when he moves up to 147. The stronger fighters at 147 are going to be able to touch Crawford with their big shots, and he could find himself taking big shots.

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“But what he wants for a UniMas show is a crazy amount of money, so who knows if he will fight,” Arum said. “I saw him in a meeting, not in the gym, but he looked sensational. We’re happy to give him a couple of fights for reasonable money to get him started before a bigger fight. But he has to decide what he wants to do and how much he is willing to fight for.”

Margarito’s last fight at welterweight was six years ago in 2009 in a fight in which he was stopped in the 9th round by Shane Mosley. That was the same fight where Margarito was caught with loaded hand wraps by Mosley’s trainer. Margarito’s three fights since then have all been at junior middleweight.

Margarito fought Manny Pacquiao at a catch-weight of 150lbs in 2010, and suffered a fractured right orbital bone in a 12 round decision loss. Margarito subsequently had three surgeries on his eye to try and repair problem.

Rather than taking a tune-up fight after the surgery to see if his eye could handle the pounding of a fight, Margarito was matched up against Miguel Cotto in a rematch in December 2011. Margarito’s right eye quickly swelled up and closed completely, causing the fight to be stopped.

Margarito is up there in age at 37, and the years that he’s been out of the ring won’t help him either. Before his retirement, Margarito had lost 3 out of his last 4 fights. His hand speed, which was never good to begin with, seemed to have slowed in the last two years of his career before he retired. Margarito’s punching power seemed to have dropped off as well after his win over Cotto in 2008. I doubt that Margarito will be able to regain the form that he had back in 2008, and without his punching power, he’s going to be battered and beaten when he faces someone good. If Arum’s plan is to match him against his smaller fighters Bradley, Crawford and Rios, then Margarito might have a slight chance of beating them. But he’s just so slow now that I can’t see him beating any of those fighters.



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