By Dan Ambrose: Dan Rafael is reporting that the pay-per-view buys for the comeback fight for Antonio Margarito (38-6, 27 KO’s) were less than spectacular, bringing in between 12,000 and 15,000 PPV buys for Margarito’s fight against Roberto Garcia on May 8th at the Plaza Monumental, Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Mexico. These are pretty horrible numbers when you compare them to the kind of numbers that the popular fighters like Floyd Mayweather Jr., Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto typically bring in for their fights. In fairness to Margarito, he did get 17,000 fans that showed up to see him fight the little known Garcia on May 8th, but the PPV numbers are what’s even more important than that for that fight.
If Margarito can’t draw good numbers, it leaves you wondering what happened. Is this just because Margarito chose an obscure opponent and fans didn’t want to waste their hard-earned money to see Margarito destroy a fighter that they probably never even heard of. Or is this a backlash because of Margarito’s issue with his hand wraps being found with a plaster-like substance inside them before his bout against Shane Mosley last year in January.
Margarito subsequently had his boxing license revoked in the United States after that incident. To this day, now over a year later, Margarito still doesn’t have his license back. Are Mexican boxing fans upset with Margarito because of that? It’s hard to tell, really. They could be turned off towards Margarito because he wasn’t just beaten by Mosley last year; he was totally dominated in getting stopped by the 38-year-old Mosley in the 9th round.
Given Mosley’s advanced age, you would assume that this is a fighter that Margarito should have been able to beat. However, Margarito looked terrible in that fight, appearing slow, tired and not with it mentally. He didn’t know to deal with Mosley’s fast hands, his in and out style of fighting and his constant clinching. And Margarito needs to somehow make his boxing fans forget about that loss. Beating a guy like Garcia probably isn’t the answer nor maybe is a rematch against Cotto, who Margarito already beat two years ago in an 11th round TKO in 2008.
Who Margarito needs to try and fight is Mosley, so that he can prove that the loss was a fluke and that he’s figured out what he did wrong in that fight and fixed it. However, getting Mosley to fight a rematch with Margarito might be a hard thing for Margarito’s promoter Bob Arum to do unless he waves a lot of money in front of the nose of Mosley to get him to want to fight a guy he already beat again. I have no doubts that Arum could make the fight with Margarito and Mosley if he wanted to, but do I think Arum would want to do that?
No, I don’t think he will. Mosley doesn’t fight for Top Rank, and it would mean that Arum would have to negotiate with Golden Boy Promotions to put the fight together. This wouldn’t be a fight where Arum would be the sole promoter and do really well. He would have to share. This is why I doubt Margarito will ever get a chance to fight Mosley again, even though it’s a fight that can probably be put together by his promoter. More than likely, Arum will try to match Margarito back up with Cotto, provided that Margarito can get back his boxing license to fight in the U.S. Arum might also put Margarito
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