Antonio Margarito

Antonio Margarito boxing news

Baldomir Wants Bout Against Margarito, Cotto or Clottey — Boxing News

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baldomir555.jpgBy Scott Gilfoid: Former World Boxing Council welterweight champion Carlos Baldomir (44-11-6, 13 KOs) reportedly wants a fight with top fighters Antonio Margarito, Joshua Clottey or Miguel Cotto according to Sycuan Ringside Promotions. The 37 year-old Baldomir hasn’t seen action since his 10-round majority decision win over light middleweight Luciano Perez in November 2007. Though Baldomir states that he’s interested in fighting one of the top welterweights in the division, it’s very questionable whether he can make the 147 pound weight limit at this stage in his career.

The last time he fought at 147 was two years ago against Floyd Mayweather in November 2006, a bout in which Baldomir was soundly defeated and lost his WBC welterweight title to Mayweather. Shortly after that, Baldomir moved up in weight to 154 lbs, the light middleweight division, where he was against defeated in a one-sided fight, a 12-round unanimous decision, to Vernon Forrest for the vacant WBC light middleweight title in July 2007.

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Pacquiao-De La Hoya Negotiations Off: Will Oscar Now Face Margarito?

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margarito46423564.jpgBy Manuel Perez: In what turned out to be a bitter pill for Golden Boy Promotions today, lightweight Manny Pacquiao walked away from an offer of 70-30 purse split with the “Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya, turning him down when he refused to budge in any way and come in at the 60-40 purse split that Pacquiao was seeking. Rather than take an offer that was less than what he found personally acceptable, Pacquiao, 29, decided to turn the fight down and look in another direction, possibly against Humberto Soto, a top super featherweight. De La Hoya, however, now has the perfect opportunity to show his fans how courageous he is and choose to fight Antonio Margarito, the World Boxing Association welterweight champion, who has been very interested in fighting De La Hoya as of late.

With Pacquiao out of the picture, the obvious choice for De La Hoya to make would be a fight against the dangerous Margarito. Few boxing fans, of course, would give De La Hoya much of a chance at beating Margarito, mainly because both fighters are going in difference career directions at this point. Margarito is at the top of the game, perhaps the number #1 or #2 welterweight in the division, depending on who you talk to, whereas De La Hoya would lucky if he could make to number #5.

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Cotto-Margarito: Trinidad Would Have Never Taken a Knee

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cotto5645764.jpgBy Manuel Perez: Felix Trinidad (42-3, 35 KOs) has always been one of my favorite fighters, a warrior that never gave an inch, even in losses to Winky Wright, Roy Jones Jr. and Bernard Hopkins. After seeing Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) twice take a knee against Antonio Margarito in their recent fight on July 26th, I could only imagine would Trinidad must have been thinking when he saw it. Believe me, Trinidad would have never taken a knee. He might have lost to a fighter as fierce and determined as Margarito, although I’m not so certain that would happen, but I can’t see him ever taking a knee once, let alone twice like Cotto did.

Trinidad in his prime would have rather gone down swinging rather than to yield the white flag of surrender and submit by taking a knee. I know of course that people will say that Cotto didn’t actually quit, that his trainer waived towel signaling for the fight to be stopped, but taking a knee two times is as close as you can get to surrendering in battle. Trinidad fought his heart out in every fight, winning some and losing some, but with him you always felt that he would go down swinging and that he wouldn’t just give up when things got rough in the ring. If it had been Trinidad in the ring with Margarito, he would have fought until the very last ounce of his energy was gone, and made Margarito take him out the old fashion way – with his fists. Perhaps this is the new generation of boxers or something, because I don’t understand it myself.

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Mosley vs. Mayorga: If Successful, Shane Wants Margarito

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mosley12345.jpgBy Tim Neilson: In a stay busy fight, former lightweight, welterweight and light middleweight champion Shane Mosley (44-5, 37 KOs) will be taking on former welterweight and light middleweight champion Ricardo Mayorga (29-6, 23 KOs) in a scheduled 12-round bout on September 27th, at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. Mosley, 36, is hoping to use a victory over the 34 year-old Mayorga as ammunition to get a fight with WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito after that. That seems more wishful thinking at this point for Mosley, who has done little is the past six years, losing six out of his last twelve fights during this stretch of time.

Margarito, if truly desperate, might take on a fighter like Mosley given his still popular name among boxing fans, but he’s clearly not the most marketable fighter out there for Margarito at this time. If Margarito does end up facing Mosley, one would believe it would only come after exhausting all other potential opponents in the welterweight or junior middleweight divisions in which to face. Mosley, at one time – in between 2000 to 2001- was arguably the top fighter in the welterweight division and pound-for-pound the top fighter in boxing.

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Forget Pacquiao, De La Hoya Needs To Avenge His Losses Or Else Face Margarito

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delahoya465224.jpgBy Chet Mills: With still no official word as to who Oscar De La Hoya will be facing for his final fight on December 6th, it seems as if the leading candidate in the running is small lightweight Manny Pacquiao, the 5’6″ Filipino star. Antonio Margarito, fresh off his 10th round TKO of Miguel Cotto, is apparently in the running as well, although most boxing fans doubt that he’ll land the fight with Oscar.

The fight is a bad match-up for Pacquiao, who will be giving up a lot of size to the 5’11” De La Hoya. In the end, the fight is more about making money for each of them than it is about a fight that is truly a competitive one. Even with Pacquiao’s incredible speed and power at the lower weights, he’ll be in the end simply too small to give De La Hoya a run for the money in the fight. For a lot of fans of De La Hoya, this potential fight has been a lightning rod for criticism, as many of them point out the size differences between the two fighters which favors the bigger De La Hoya by a considerable margin. Indeed, De La Hoya has been fighting mostly at 154, whereas up until his last fight against David Diaz, Pacquiao has been fighting as a super featherweight and going quite well at that weight, with the exception of his two fights with Juan Manuel Marquez.

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De La Hoya Needs To Man-Up and Fight Margarito

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delahoya46463.jpgBy Manuel Perez: If you’re like me, you were expecting much more from Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs) for his so-called last fight of his boxing career likely against super featherweight Manny Pacquiao (37-5, 27 KOs) on December 6th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Besides the whole silly image of a fighter of De La Hoya’s size going out of the game against Pacquiao, whose miniature 5’6″ frame is going to make him look like a Lilliputian next to the 5’11” De La Hoya, the fight isn’t what the public wants from Oscar for his final fight. Heck, he’s already fought two consecutive smaller fighters in Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Steve Forbes, fighters obviously chosen, among other reasons, for their smaller size and inability to hurt the bigger De La Hoya.

After these match-ups, do we really need to see Oscar go up against yet another undersized fighter? The answer is no. It’s time that De La Hoya grows a pair and summons some courage to take on WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito, who has been making it no secret that he wants to fight De La Hoya. A fight against Pacquiao, although a fight that would pad De La Hoya’s wallet, wouldn’t make him look particularly brave to the boxing public, and if this is truly his last fight, it would likely leave an impression of him that he was ducking the best welterweight fighter in boxing, Margarito, in order to face a fighter too small to give him a fight.

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Clottey Defeats Judah, Will Zab Still Get a Shot at Margarito?

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clottey7536.jpgBy Dean Harman: As one would expect, number #1 ranked IBF welterweight Joshua Clottey (35-2, 20 KOs) defeated former undisputed welterweight champion Zab Judah (36-6, 25 KOs) on Saturday night, beating him by a 9th round technical decision to claim the vacant IBF welterweight title at the Palms Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight was stopped after Judah, 30, sustained a wide cut over his right eye early in the 9th, and complained to the ringside doctor that he couldn’t see out of his eye. Obviously, by Judah saying that, he basically was giving the doctor the ammunition to end the fight, which he promptly did.

By Judah saying he couldn’t see, it left the doctor with only one choice – to stop the fight. It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway if he let the fight continue, because Judah, who has now lost four out of his last seven fights, didn’t appear to be gaining momentum and looked like he was well on his way to losing by a decision. However, the referee Robert Byrd, who ruled that the cut was caused by a head butt, appeared to miss the actual cause of the cut – a left uppercut from Clottey, thus ruining what should have been a 9th round TKO win for Clottey instead of a technical decision.

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Options Available For Miguel Cotto – Williams, Judah, Margarito, Clottey

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cotto462745.jpgBy Thomas Hanson: Since his brutal 11th round TKO loss to challenger Antonio Margarito (37-5, 27 KOs), there’s been a lot of speculation about what former WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) will do next to rebound from the loss. For most boxing fans, they would like nothing better than to see Cotto get right back in the ring and fight Margarito in a rematch at the end of the year, perhaps in November or December. This would be the best scenario, because a rematch between the two of them would be a huge fight, a tremendous moneymaker for both fighters.

Cotto, though, took a lot of punishment in the later part of the fight in particular to the head, and it’s uncertain that he would want to risk getting back in the ring with a heavy pressure fighter like Margarito so soon. It would definitely be a ballsy move on Cotto’s part if he were to do that, similar to the way that welterweight Paul Williams immediately called for a rematch with Carlos Quintana after losing his title to him months earlier. However, in Williams’ case, he didn’t take a savage beating like Cotto, and he fought more or less competitively throughout the fight, especially in the later rounds when he appeared to be coming on and starting to regain control of the fight.

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Don’t Count On De La Hoya Fighting Margarito

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delahoya54747446.jpgBy Manuel Perez: Now that newly crowned WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito (37-5, 27 KOs) has finished off Miguel Cotto and put him to rest, the natural next opponent for Margarito would seem to be boxing great Oscar De la Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs), who previously hinted at wanting to fight Cotto if he were to defeat Margarito. However, Margarito upset those plans by erasing Cotto, thus taking away what would have been a huge big money fight for De la Hoya, who plans on bowing out of boxing on December 6th. Alas, De la Hoya hasn’t so far shown any interest in fighting Margarito in December, which somehow I find not too surprising. With the way Margarito decimated Cotto, almost taking head of in the process of taking him apart bit by bit on Saturday night, leaving him a bloody mess.

I’m doubt De la Hoya would want to risk having the same fate happening to him in his last fight of his career. Margarito would probably overwhelm De La Hoya in the same manner as he did to Cotto, walking him down, throwing nonstop punches until a badly beaten and bloody De La Hoya quits in a similar fashion as Cotto. I do think that De La Hoya would do well for a few rounds, but by the 5th or 6th, Margarito would get to him with his big body shots and likely drop him to the canvas in the same way that Bernard Hopkins did to De La Hoya in his 9th round TKO of his in September 2004.

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Is Cotto Overrated?

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cotto6425746.jpgBy Thomas Hanson: WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs) fell completely apart in the second half of Saturday’s bout with Antonio Margarito (37-5, 27 KOs) ending up getting stopped in the 11th round after taking a knee on two separate occasions in the round. It wasn’t the best way for a fighter as proud as Cotto to be taken out, especially since he went down the second time without even getting hit by Margarito. In fact, it seemed that Cotto went down more out of fear of what Margarito might do to him rather than what he did do.

What hurt perhaps even worse than that, however, is that Cotto was thought to be the best fighter in all of boxing going into the fight with Margarito, and was picked by most fans and experts to easily defeat Margarito. Being one of the few that actually saw Cotto for all his weaknesses, it’s hard not to gloat now. if the fans and boxing writers had done even a little bit of research into Cotto’s past fights, they would have seen that he barely beat a faded Shane Mosley, who appeared to have fought Cotto to a virtual standstill in the bout. All one has to do is take a quick view of the fight and fast forward to the last three rounds of the fight when a very tired and worried looking Cotto ran for his life to preserve his victory over Mosley.

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