Cotto Stops Margarito in Rematch

Miguel Cotto connected with a strong right hand to the face of Antonio Margarito. Cotto won the fight by TKO.

Antonio Margarito started with the taunting early, at the opening bell, or thereabouts. The more Miguel Cotto landed his fists on Margarito’s face, the more Margarito shook his head, the more he smiled, even as blood dripped from his right eye down his cheek.

Margarito continued in this way throughout his second fight with Cotto, in their rematch late Saturday at Madison Square Garden. Even as bruises colored the area around Margarito’s eye, even as it swelled until it eventually shut, he shook, and he smiled, as if he were winning the bout, as if he enjoyed the beating Cotto was administering.

If boxers won fights based on their reaction to taking punches, Margarito would have triumphed over Cotto, just as he did in 2008. Instead, he inflicted little damage, and doctors determined the bout over, a technical knockout in the 10th round. Margarito appeared as if he wanted to continue, as he squinted through the good left eye and thumped his chest. He later insisted that officials ended the whole thing early to protect his opponent.

“He means nothing to me,” Cotto said, his face also bruised but practically handsome compared with Margarito’s.

Cotto (37-2, now 30 knockouts) retained his World Boxing Association super welterweight title. This did little to settle the question of whether Margarito (38-8) cheated in their first meeting. But it did give Cotto a measure of revenge and bragging rights as the best fighter — by a mile — on this Saturday night.

After two rounds of crisp, accurate punches thrown mostly by Cotto, the two exchanged flurries of blows as the crowd roared its approval throughout Round 3. By then, Cotto had taken control, just as in their previous fight, which Cotto didn’t finish.

The sold-out crowd appeared almost entirely pro-Puerto Rican, in honor of Cotto, one of the most popular fighters in the history of the Garden. Margarito dressed his intended part — that of heel — wearing what looked like bedazzled green-and-red disco shorts, his hair in cornrows, his smile wider every time the crowd showered him with boos from the rafters to the ring.

Halfway through, Margarito’s right eye looked swollen shut, even as he smiled. The seventh round ended with two Cotto punches after the bell, lest anyone forget the animosity that lingered. Not long after, the fight ended, and Cotto’s mother made a beeline for Margarito’s corner. She screamed at him, but Margarito hardly reacted.

“I needed two more rounds to beat this man,” Margarito said. Yet as he conducted postfight interviews near the ring, blood continued to drip from his right eye. Handlers continued to wipe it from his face.

To say that Margarito and Cotto hate each other may not capture the vitriol that flows between them. The second they enter a room together, the tension seems to rise. Their faces convey what words fail to. Their eyes fill with disdain and scorn. It is hate, of course, but it’s somehow also more than that.

Margarito won their first fight, in July 2008 in Las Vegas, where Cotto, the favorite, led through five rounds on the scorecards; where Margarito, the underdog, continued to push forward, taking punches in order to deliver them; where Margarito stunned Cotto, sent blood gushing from Cotto’s nose, bludgeoned Cotto so hard for so long that Cotto ended up in the hospital, bleeding from the ears.

Even then, it took six months for their feud to reach full boil: not until Margarito contested Shane Mosley in Los Angeles, where he was caught wearing illegal hand wraps before the bout. When Mosley battered Margarito, suddenly, for Cotto, his earlier defeat made sense.

Cotto has remained resolute on this point ever since: He believes that Margarito cheated. He even summoned Naazim Richardson, Mosley’s trainer, the man who discovered the illegal wraps, to New York for this fight.

As the fight approached, Margarito wore the veil of a villain comfortably. He lobbed insults at Cotto and took to wearing sunglasses indoors. He entered the pre-fight news conference shouting, his words dripping with sarcasm: “Here comes the criminal! Open the doors to the criminal!”

“He hits like a girl,” Margarito added.

Cotto lashed back, calling Margarito a “child” and “an embarrassment to boxing.” He added: “If you don’t know what ‘criminal’ means, you can look it up in the dictionary. It’s someone who uses a weapon.”

At Friday’s weigh-in, the crowd serenaded Margarito with chants of “sucio,” or “dirty” in Spanish. But he had bigger problems, like that right eye, the orbital bone of which Manny Pacquiao fractured in a Nov. 2010 bloodbath. For much of that lopsided bout, Margarito couldn’t see out of that eye, and in recent weeks, it appeared the New York State Athletic Commission would not grant him a boxing license.

After an examination, it did, and the fight was not delayed. As Margarito shook his head, as he smiled, it was Cotto who actually fought, who inflicted the damage. Margarito’s eye was proof — of both victory and of revenge.

By GREG BISHOP | NYT

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