Boxing back at MSG with two big fights
Reigning WBA Super Welterweight Champion, Miguel Cotto, left, of Puerto Rico and boxer Antonio Margarito, from Mexico, pose for pictures during a press conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Sept. 19, 2011) Credit: AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum held one news conference Tuesday in Manhattan to hype two major Madison Square Garden boxing shows. The main event is the Dec. 3 grudge rematch between WBC super-welterweight champion Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito in an HBO pay-per-view event in the main arena.
But the prelim card on Oct. 22, featuring WBC and WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire defending his titles against undefeated Argentine Omar Narvaez in the Theater at Madison Square Garden, will be the first event at MSG since renovations began last spring. It also marks the New York debut of one of boxing's top pound-for-pound fighters.
"I think Donaire has a great opportunity to be a big superstar,'' said Arum, who plans to move the "Filipino Flash'' up from 118 if he gets past Narvaez, eventually to the 135-pound lightweight division.
Donaire is thrilled by that prospect and by the chance to fight at the Garden. "Madison Square Garden is where the oldtimers fought and got all bloodied up, and they never gave up,'' Donaire said. "To be a part of it is an honor.''
As a native New Yorker, Arum also has a fondness for MSG. "Of all the arenas in the world, there's still only one Madison Square Garden,'' Arum said. The promoter crowed that the presale for Cotto-Margarito already has surpassed $1.2 million and predicted a sellout for the rematch of Margarito's controversial 11th-round TKO of Cotto on July 26, 2008, in Las Vegas.
After Margarito was discovered to have illegal hand wraps before his next fight against Shane Mosley, leading to a one-year suspension by the California boxing commission, suspicions grew that Margarito might have used loaded gloves to carve up Cotto in their bout.
Arum, who promotes both fighters, described Margarito as "a friend, a true sportsman and an honest man. I believe him when he says whatever happened before the Mosley fight, he was unaware.''
Margarito denied knowledge of any wrongdoing by former trainer Rafael Capetillo, saying, "I can't change the opinion of anybody, but I'm telling you I've always fought clean.''
Cotto carries a photo on his cellphone of the illegal wraps Margarito was discovered wearing, and the popular Puerto Rican champion said the rematch is personal. "If it's personal for him,'' Margarito shrugged, "we both can take it out in the ring.''
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