Arum & Margarito's Attitudes Bad For Boxing

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.

This is the type of behavior that turns off the casual fan.

First off, I find it hard to believe Arum is just looking out for Margarito's best interest, when he has already stated that he hold a Pay-Per-View event in Mexico that will generate 200,000 to 300,000 buys.

It’s also hard to accept that he is not concerned with the potential millions he lost when the Cotto rematch was effectively cancelled, as Cotto has stated he will not fight Margarito in Mexico.

The casual fan looks to this as another reason boxing has been cast to the back page of only a few newspapers that even still choose to cover the sport.

Margarito himself has plead complete ignorance to the whole situation, claiming that he had no idea what Capetillo was doing. One can only imagine that the CSAC won't look kindly upon Margarito should he circumvent their ruling by fighting in Mexico, and possibly affect his application for relicensing in 2010.

Margarito’s silence is deafening, while Arum's loud reaction is suspicious.

The penalty is just, and while the attitudes of all involved are incomprehensible, this may teach more fighters to hold their corners accountable. Maybe then the public will stop thinking that boxing on the whole and boxers in general are a corrupt group.