Margarito Passes on the Sugar

Margarito Passes on the Sugar
By Steve Kim (Nov 20, 2008) Photo © German Villasenor

Contrary to some internet rumors that were floating around, Antonio Margarito was not kidnapped in Tijuana by a gang of bandits holding him for ransom. Nor was he was buried underneath the Meadowlands of New Jersey next to Jimmy Hoffa. He didn't disappear into 'the Bermuda Triangle' like Amelia Earhart. And you won’t see him on any milk cartons as you have your morning cereal.

He's not missing. In fact, he's alive and well.

"No, no, he's not being held hostage in Mexico," said his co-manager Sergio Diaz on Wednesday afternoon, laughing off the rumors. "Tony's been out; he was on vacation, a two week vacation. The unfortunate thing is I left for China and wasn't able to talk with Tony until he actually got back from vacation. When I got back from China, Tony had just left. So we could just never get together when he got back. That's when we sat down to discuss the fight."

Diaz and his partner, Francisco Espinoza, crossed the border on Monday and met with their fighter on Monday to discuss a possible bout with Shane Mosley.

"HBO made their offer," said Diaz. "The offer just didn't set well with all of us, the promoter, the fighter, the management. We still sat down, we spoke about it, and we still wanted to move forward with it. But when it came down to it, it's just not enough. It just wasn't enough. Yeah, it's Shane Mosley, but he had more of a name seven years ago. So Antonio really decided that he just wanted to move forward without Mosley and look for a bigger fight."

HBO was said to have offered a license fee of around $4 million for that matchup, which was to be split among the two sides at Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions. Margarito is said to have balked at having to take a 50-50 split with Mosley.
"If that is the question, I think he does have a valid point," conceded Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank. "He was at the Mayorga fight and I told Richard Schaefer this, he saw that the biggest applause was when he walked in the arena - and there were very few people in the arena - and he probably thinks that the value for his services are much greater than Shane Mosley's."

The Mosley-Mayorga fight, which was held at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California on September 27th, was a financial disaster for Golden Boy Promotions, while Margarito is coming off a promotion with Miguel Cotto that did around a half-million pay-per-view buys.

But on the flipside, regardless of the purse split, $2 million still represents a career-high payday for Margarito and it was he and his management that stirred things up with some verbal volleys in Mosley's direction. Also, in this economic climate, it just doesn't look kosher to be eschewing large paydays, especially for a fighter who appealed to 'Jose the Plumber' with his down-to-earth, blue-collar ethic.

Diaz admits, "Yes, we're thinking about the backlash we might get, but Antonio has always been a blue-collar worker, he's always been a fighter, he's always fought to get to a point where he can make a little bit of money. We're in a bad economy and Antonio does understand that. But he would rather wait and hope for a bigger fight."

And that bigger fight seems to be a rematch with Cotto, who is slated to return in February against either Jesus Soto-Karass or Michael Jennings.

"I know factually that the Cotto camp wants that fight and I assume that the Margarito camp wants that fight," said duBoef. "It was a great fight for the sport, it was a great event and I think that that fight has some very good merits of that rematch happening later on."

The question is, will Margarito have a fight in the interim before that? As the months go by, the momentum and goodwill from July 26th continues to fade away.

"We're hoping it doesn't go that far," Diaz says of his fighter’s layoff. "We are hoping that Top Rank could fight us sooner. I just spoke with Todd and he said they would get to work on finding us something. It's going to be a lot better for the promotion if both fighters fought on different cards and met in June. It's going to be a big fight between a Puerto Rican and Mexican. But we're hoping we will fight before that. It's only going to help out the event for June."

Top Rank would like for Margarito to co-headline a show in Mexico alongside Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., but if he's not willing to face Mosley for $2 million, what are the chances that he'll accept a tune-up for $750,000?

When it's all said and done, if he decides to sit and wait on the return bout with Cotto, the person he's hurting the most is himself - not only from a prizefighting standpoint, but from the viewpoint of marketing.

Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

"As a promoter you can't agree or disagree with what somebody wants to do. You can only give them the opportunity. And we gave him the opportunity for the fight. What his evaluation on the fight is, or what he thinks it's worth and what his long-term agenda is in his head is not necessarily ours. So I think we explored the possible matchup and it's just not working in the cards for him," stated duBoef.

But the manager insists that everyone is still on the same wavelength when it comes to the career of 'the Tijuana Tornado'.

"We're all on the same page in regards to this Mosley fight and what we can get in the future before a Cotto rematch. Yes, we're all on the same page."

A NEW WORLD

There's no doubt about it, everyone is tightening their belts - even HBO. It wasn't that long ago that they put up around $3 million for stinkers like Winky Wright-Sam Soliman and then over $6 million just seven months ago for Joe Calzaghe-Bernard Hopkins. Then you had all the Floyd Mayweather and Roy Jones mismatches of the past that routinely fetched $3-4 million license fees.

It's a shame that Margarito-Mosley couldn't be consummated. This is the caliber of fight - at least on paper - that HBO once had on a regular basis during their heyday.

But it's a brand new world out there economically. If fighters like Margarito don't realize that, then they'll soon find out that the business will move on without them. The days of fighters like Wright being bailed out (when he turned down a huge payday - between 4-5 million - for the rematch against Taylor because he couldn't get a 50-50 split and was then given Ike Quartey for a couple million instead) are long gone.

And y'know what?

That's not a bad thing at all. In fact, it's probably been a long time coming.

BLAME GAME

Oscar De La Hoya - on HBO's '24/7' - seems to be blaming Freddie Roach on the current economic crisis, the plight of the auto industry, the housing market and the rising unemployment in our country, in addition to his losing to Floyd Mayweather last May.

Nobody can throw a trainer under the bus quite like 'the Golden Boy'.

MID-WEEK FLURRIES

Manny Pacquiao will be giving away 500 turkeys on Sunday at noon at the Lake Street Park in Filipinotown in Los Angeles....Free Edgerrin James!!! Free Edgerrin James!!!....Discussions for a bout between Mosley and Andre Berto will be taking place in Las Vegas this weekend between Golden Boy and DiBella Entertainment from what I'm told....Shouldn't Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban really be investigated for a lot of the trades he's made in the NBA or letting Steve Nash walk when he did?....Is Mike Mussina a Hall-of-Famer?.....Seriously, are the Lakers too soft to hoist the O'Brien Trophy in June?....

For Questions or Comments
E-Mail Steve: k9kim@maxboxing.com

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