Given the discovery of plaster in Margarito's hands prior to his bout with Mosley and Margarito's subsequent one-sided defeat to Mosley, it's difficult to have a discussion on firm ground regarding the Margarito/Cotto fight and what it meant. If you give Cotto the benefit of the doubt (and why shouldn't you) that Margarito had indeed loaded his gloves, then the reasonable conclusion is that the victory should mean nothing, and that Cotto's defeat should not count against him. Having said all that, we can still analyze the Margarito/Cotto fight from a common perspective, as observers, regardless of what we think about Margarito's hand-wraps. In the very least, without making statements about the merits of either fighter's performance, we can discuss what happened in the ring. The reason I bring it up is that most people seem to think that Cotto was winning handily until the 8th or 9th round, when he begin to fall apart, at which point Margarito took over and shortly knocked Cotto out. I contend that Margarito's punching power (whether due or not to plaster) was bothering Cotto from the very start. And that as a result of it, he could not execute his plan to push Margarito back, work his body, and eventually knock him out (as Mosley did). Instead, Cotto found himself almost from the opening minute on the retreat, having to resort to offense on the run if he was to do any damage at all. And my guess is, he managed to do very little. He was not stepping into his shots, he was not throwing to the body, he was not slowing Margarito's advance - not even in the beginning. If you watch the fight again, you'll see that Margarito is in control for nearly all of the fight. Cotto managed to land shots as he used up his energy moving constantly, and absorbing what probably were illegal shots to the body and head. The bottom line is, whether you think Margarito's gloves were loaded or not against Cotto, it wasn't the case that Cotto was easily beating him before he ran out of steam, or that Margarito was in any way discouraged by the course of the fight. It was not a schooling followed by a knock-out. It was a slow beat-down culminating in what could only have been an inevitable knock-out.
Cotto won at 5 of the first 6 rounds...at least. It seem to me that from the start Cotto game plan was not to go punch for punch vs. Margarito...but to outbox him. And by outbox i mean boxing him in the center of the ring....not what he ended up doing because of the pressure and the plaster in Margarito's wrap.
I give him a pass for the loss. We'll never know for certain (most likely), but I simply cannot bring myself to believe Margarito won that fight on the square...& I do feel Cotto won most of the completed rounds.
Margarito took over from the 7th round...while I gave Cotto all of the first 6 rounds except for round 2, it's true that Margarito was doing good work here and there. Bloodied Cotto's nose in round 2, and gradually broke Cotto down with bodyshots and uppercuts. Steward was on point when countering Lampley's man-love of Miguel. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QCpgqOwB4PQ?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QCpgqOwB4PQ?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> Fuck Margarito though, and I'd like to see him take another dreadful ass-kicking.
Marg had plaster and ruined Cotto...thats why Pac fought him because he was a ruined fighter like skeletor Oscar, and Hatton were.
Isn't this sort of an asinine exercise? I say that because you cannot separate the loaded gloves from what happened in the fight. The two are dependent upon one another. If you could somehow go back and re-execute the fight by mathematically removing the impact of loaded gloves, then maybe this would have some merit in a bizarre academic sort of way. But as it stands, how do you know that the very reason Marg took over about mid-fight wasn't BECAUSE of the loaded gloves? That had they not been loaded, the minimal (but good) work Marg did would have had a far less severe impact and Cotto, and thus he would not have faded and been TKO'd with a bruised skull and what looked like deep lacerations on his face? And perhaps, as you mentioned, without the loaded gloves Cotto's initial plan may have developed as he wanted it to, and the whole fight would have ended differently (like the Marg/Mosley fight)? So I see no way you can really deduce anything from what happened in the fight unless you had first hand knowledge that the gloves were NOT loaded. Anything else is marred by speculation or loaded gloves. It's almost like taking a fight where one guy apparently had doused his gloves with pepper spray, and so the other guy couldn't see through burning reddened eyes and kept pawing at his face all night, but then you ask everyone to please give the guy with the spiked gloves credit because after all, he won a lot of rounds late in the fight.
Agreed, no way to tell accurately how things could have been different. I was impressed with Margarito's chin and stamina however. He took a lot of fire and kept coming. The problem is even that you could argue was at least in part a product of having loaded gloves. It's easier to keep going if you know your punches are doing an extra amount of damage. It's going to add up.
Not only that, but if you have loaded gloves, your opponent is more likely to be covering up than attacking you.
Instead of starting another thread i'll propose another virtually unanswerable question here: If the illegally loaded gloves weren't discovered, how different would Margarito-Mosley have been?
Or if you have loaded gloves, punching your opponent in the head or body can diminish his power quickly as well. So many what if's. And fuck margacheato for us having to question it.
Well, I went to great lengths I thought to clarify that as you said, we cannot know for certain whether Margarito's gloves were loaded or not. And I thought I made it clear it isn't what the thread is about. Rather, it's about what happened, at the most superficial level, during the course of the fight. Because, as I pointed out, whether Margarito's gloves were loaded or not, a bout did occur, in which one fighter, by many accounts, dominated the action, and in which that same fighter was eventually knocked, perhaps suddenly in the eyes of some, perhaps inevitably in the eyes of others.
Who said anything about how things, "could've" been? Who asked the question, "were Margarito's gloves loaded or not?" Who asked for an assessment of the credit Margarito is due? Or to Cotto, for that matter? I gotta say. I'm really starting to wonder about the reading capacity of some of the posters here. On the other hand, maybe it's not safe to assume that those willing to reply to the thread bothered to read it first.
:giggle::giggle: Which is fine because you didn't respond to it (or call it asinine, although I'm sure you'd be willing to do so whether you read it or not).
Now that is a good question because looking at the Mosley-Margarito fight it's easy to assume Shane still might have defeated a plasterized Margarito since the guy barely laid a glove on Shane the whole fight. On the other hand, like you yourself said having loaded wraps will likely effect one's confidence. Knowing you're hitting your opponent with "brick fists" is bound to make you feel invincible. Also many feel Margarito was in a bad state of mind after getting busted before the fight so if you eleminate that scenerio as well he may have performed much better. So taking all that into effect you may have had the Margarito who fought Cotto show up against Mosley rather than that slow as molases wannabe, that Shane actually wound up fighting. That would have likely led to a definite fight of the year and Mosley would have suffered some serious long term damage because he loves a slugfest and he refuses to give an inch when engaging in them. On top of that he would have more than likely stubbornly lasted all 12 rds and may even have still defeated Margarito by KO.
