Cheaters never prosper.

Let me rephrase that.  Cheaters never prosper unless Bob Arum promotes them. 

Just last year, prior to his fight against Shane Mosley, illegal inserts containing plaster of Paris were found in Antonio Margarito’s hand wraps.  After the fight, which Mosley won by knockout, the Nevada State Athletic Commission revoked Margarito’s boxing license.

Margarito denied knowledge of the illegal wraps and maintained that his career had been legitimate.   

His claims are dubious at best.

Prior to the Mosley fight, Margarito brutally knocked out his last two opponents—two previously undefeated champions, Kermit Cintron and Miguel Cotto.  Margarito stopped Cintron on a body shot that Cintron later described as “getting hit with a brick”.  Three months later, Margarito rearranged Cotto’s face in a fashion quite unusual to a typical boxing match. 

If Margarito cheated against Cintron and/or Cotto—and his pedestrian efforts in his next two fights certainly legitimize this notion—Margarito committed the most horrific crime in all of sports.  Nothing is worse than tampering with your gloves in a combat sport. 

Not only are you violating the spirit of competition, you are committing a potentially deadly crime.  Boxing is brutal enough as it is; fighters do not need the added risk of having their brains bashed in with cement blocks.

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Most boxing fans would be satisfied if Margarito never appeared in a ring ever again.

But alas, the boxing world is a funny place.

Rather than forcing Margarito to reestablish his career from scratch, or even disassociating with the probable criminal, Arum and Top Rank are capitalizing off his self-induced notoriety to build one of the biggest fights of the year: a lucrative showdown against the number one pound for pound fighter in the sport, Manny Pacquiao. 

For his troubles, Margarito will earn a seven-figure payday ($3 million plus), the largest of his career. He has earned this fight with Pacquiao, not through his own merits, but through the infamy associated with his illegal activity.  Clean, noble fighters do not sell as many tickets.

Ironically, Margarito is not the only fighter entering the ring Saturday night because of his decision to use illegal hand wraps.  His opponent, Pacquiao, has indirectly received an inordinate amount of collateral benefits from Margarito’s actions.

Pacquiao’s ascension into mainstream super-stardom came after his one-sided victory over Oscar De La Hoya in December of 2008.  De La Hoya had been saving his December date for a fight against Miguel Cotto.  First, Cotto needed to defeat Margarito in their summer showdown.

However, Cotto succumbed to the pressure of a concrete battering and his chance at a lucrative payday went by the wayside. 

De La Hoya was now without an opponent until a “Dream Fight” suggestion by Larry Merchant got the ball rolling on a fight with Pacquiao.  (Given how shot De La Hoya looked that night, it’s a shame imagining how Cotto’s career may have turned out had he been the one to send De La Hoya into retirement rather than Pacquiao.)

The rest is history. 

This Saturday night, a real life good vs. evil drama will unfold in the ring; not even WWE could write it up any better. 

Boxing’s biggest hero vs. boxing’s biggest villain—all for millions and millions of dollars.

Who ever said cheaters never prosper?