Antonio Margarito faces off this weekend against Manny Pacquiao. But like his opponent, Margarito’s career in recent years has received much attention due to one opponent neither of them has been able to get in the ring, Floyd Mayweather.
In 2006, Antonio Margarito was a tenured WBO welterweight titlist looking for his big opportunity to break into the mainstream. That golden goose seemed to appear when his promoter, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, offered his stablemate Floyd Mayweather a career-high $8 million dollar payday to face him. Mayweather had expressed his discontent with Arum’s handling of his career, and the offer was viewed as Arum’s way to keep Floyd in-house against a tough opponent.
Mayweather countered that he also wanted guarantees that he would also get to face Miguel Cotto and Ricky Hatton for at least $10 million a piece, something Arum did not feel Mayweather was worth based on his ticket sales and pay-per-view viability at that point. Mayweather walked, and Margarito lost what would have been his biggest fight.
However, Bob Arum used Mayweather’s departure as the centerpiece of a campaign that helped make Margarito a national name. Dubbin him as the “most feared fighter in the sport,” Arum took every opportunity to claim Mayweather turned down the offer completely out of fear. Margarito even went as far as to famously confront Mayweather at a press conference regarding a title shot. Mayweather advised him that they would eventually fight, but later infamously stated “we’re not fighting to prove to the boxing fans who the best is.”
Mayweather never seriously looked at Margarito as an opponent following his departure from Top Rank. Even today, Margarito is not sure if it was fear or promotional issues that made Mayweather turn him down. But the Tijuana Tornado does believe it was a stylistic matchup that concerned Mayweather.
“I really don’t know what his reasoning was for not taking the fight,” Margarito told Beats, Boxing & Mayhem. “It could be because he saw I’m a big Mexican, a fighter that goes forward and throws a lot of punches. Maybe he was too worried to take that chance. He’s a fighter that keeping the ‘0’ is very important to him.”
Margarito’s hand wrap scandal is a controversy that will linger for the rest of his career. To some, he did no favors for his image by joking about the incident on the second episode of HBO’s 24/7: Pacquiao-Margarito. On the show, Margarito’s team placed a block of cement on his hand while he feigned aloofness to what was going on.
When asked if that was wise considering his license is currently revoked in California, and could be still be in other states, Margarito explains that he was unaware of the joke until the last-minute.
“I didn’t mean to disrespect anybody by doing it,” Margarito explained to Beats, Boxing & Mayhem. “It was more something for the 24/7 because we were joking. I was surprised when they came in and put it on my hands. I don’t know if you noticed my facial expression when they put it on me, but I just rolled with it.”
HBO’s last 24/7 show will be air this Friday (November 12) at 9:30 PM.
The Pacquiao-Margarito PPV card begins Saturday (November 13) at 9 PM.
Beats, Boxing and Mayhem 