By Manuel Perez: In a decision that I find totally wrong today, Antonio Margarito – and his trainer Javier Capetillon – was worked over by the by the California State Athletic Commission, who took away their boxing licenses for a year. I don’t agree with any of this, not one bit. Here we have the evidence, which is the hand wraps themselves, still being analyzed in the lab and won’t be ready until the middle of March, yet both Capetillon and Margarito get their boxing licenses revoked.
Nothing has been found other than a case of an old hand wrap that was mistakenly used by Capetillon when he was searching for the hand wraps from his bag to use for Margarito before his fight with Shane Mosley on January 24th. Because the hand wraps had been used before, maybe for sparring, the wraps were slightly wet with sweat, blood stained and hard in some areas due to the natural drying that occurs when something has become wet.
This is a simple mistake, I tell you, and not some kind of sinister plan on the part of Margarito or his trainer. Believe me, this kind of thing could happen to anyone. If you have a bag of stuff that you carry around, of course you can get things mixed up when it comes to putting on wraps for a fight. That doesn’t mean that he was trying to pull something over on anyone.
I mean, who in their right mind would try and put on an old sweaty hand wrap, you know? If someone was trying to do something sinister, the last thing they would do is use an old hand wrap for the purpose of pulling the wool over someone’s’ eyes.
This is so insane. There’s no evidence of guilt other than an old hand wrap that was partially moist from sweat, yet they revoked both of their licenses anyway. Capetillon even admitted to making a mistake of grabbing the wrong hand pads that had been used previously on another fighter, so how can they penalize either of them, particularly Margarito?
Even if they wanted to penalize someone, you would think that that they would go after Capetillon and not Margarito, because Antonio already told them that he had no idea what his trainer had put on him. How can you discount what Margarito says? He’s been an honest straight shooter for his entire career, but he’s still penalized and not given the benefit of the doubt.
He needs to be believed, because he’s not the one that puts the wraps on, it’s his trainer that does that. And even still, mistakes like this can easily happen. My hope is that once the pads are fully analyzed by the lab and the results come back on March 15h, showing that there’s nothing on the pad but old sweat and maybe a little blood, Margarito will be cleared of this and his license revocation overturned.
His attorney is reportedly planning on appealing this decision and hopefully the commission – once they have the lab results showing that Margarito is innocent – will overturn their decision to revoke his license. If not, Margarito can still fighting but probably only out of the country. If that’s the case, I hope to see him on Latin Fury’s in the future.
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