Boxing no longer garners the headlines the sport once enjoyed. While there are plenty of newsworthy and exciting headlines out there, boxing found itself in the limelight for a moment recently.
Former welterweight titlist Antonio Margarito and his trainer, Javier Capetillo, had their licenses revoked by the California State Athletic Commission after a hard foreign substance was found under the fighter's hand wraps before his January bout against Shane Mosley.
The CSAC reviewed the facts of the case and the now infamous hand wraps. The commission determined there was enough evidence to support the claim Capetillo doctored his fighter's hands.
Capetillo and Maragrito both received one-year suspensions from the CSAC. This ruling will effectively keep Margarito out of action in the United States for a minimum of one year, and following the conclusion of the initial suspension, Margarito will be forced to re-apply for a license.
Capetillo did at least have the backbone to kind of take the blame. "I committed a big mistake," Capetillo said. "I don't want this young man [Margarito] to have problems. I'm here to cover any responsibility. I committed this innocent mistake."
Last time I checked, inserting an illegal pad that may or may not have contained a plaster-like substance was a little more than an innocent mistake. Essentially, Capetillo was adding a hard foreign substance to an already hard object—the human hands.
Margarito's promoter, Bob Arum, immediately went on the offensive, blasting the CSAC for going above and beyond in issuing a punishment. Arum went as far as to claim that the suspension was handed down because Margarito is Mexican.
Arum has said he'll fight this ruling via the court system and has said that his company, Top Rank will boycott boxing in California until the ruling is reversed.
Arum is now out a potential huge payday as he was planning to set up a rematch between Margarito and Miguel Cotto in New York this summer, a fight that would have likely generated millions of dollars in revenue.
Instead of accepting the ruling and abiding by it, Arum immediately said he will have Margarito fight this summer in Mexico, a country that has a track record of not honoring suspensions issued in other jurisdictions.
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