Part of a "Latino Athletes" feature thematic throughout the issue... Anybody catch it? The writer pretty much states as non-editorial fact that both DLH and PBF ducked him. :think Some interesting (though not revelatory) info on his early life, too. Already posted? (probably...) Tough ****, it hasn't been IB posted.
I haven't seen or heard about it, but that's interesting news. In the end, IMO, I'm not completely confident Margarito could beat Mayweather or De La Hoya, so he really gets the best of the situation by having the benefit of people at large believing he was ducked. It's a pretty good deal, although the huge payday would have been hard to beat, obviously.
They don't just say Margarito and Mayweather ducked him, they also hint that the entire WW division ducked him at some point in almost every single article I ran into whilst completely ignoring other harsh facts about Margarito back then.
Haven't bought an issue of Si is ages. A **** rag to be honest... but might have to stop by Barnes & Nobles for an hour or 2.
Damn, Margarito gets alot of extra play somehow. They said he was getting mobbed at the Mosley/Mayorga fight like he was Julio Ceasar Chavez. He's a true superstar now - at least according to Vernon Forrest, who was also there.
ON A CONCRETE slab softened only by a thin layer of grimy beige carpeting, the boxer nobody wants to face is finishing his fourth set of crunches. Antonio Margarito is back in full workout mode at Gimnasio Azteca, the basement gym in Tijuana to which he returned only three weeks after relieving Miguel Cotto of his WBA welterweight belt in July. All he's missing is an opponent. Margarito, 30, recently learned that Oscar De La Hoya has passed him over. "He promised he would fight me," the exasperated boxer says. De La Hoya, 35, boxing's top rainmaker, said Margarito should "wait in line, because there's 20 other guys that want to fight me." De La Hoya's camp claims he decided to fight Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines solely for business reasons. And while it's true that Pacquiao, the 29-year-old WBC lightweight and super featherweight champion, trumps Margarito in pay-per-view appeal, he is also a much safer opponent: a small fighter who began his career as a flyweight and has neither Margarito's punching power nor his indestructible chin. "Oscar is afraid of me," says Margarito. "He knows I would take him apart." De La Hoya is not the first brand-name boxer to duck Margarito. By 2006, having won the WBO welterweight title and defended it seven times over four years, Margarito had joined the pack of elite fighters stalking pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. But not even an $8 million offer from Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, which would have been Mayweather's biggest payday at the time, could entice him to take on Margarito. Cotto was not as cautious, and he paid a hefty price. The previously unbeaten champ from Puerto Rico was battered by Margarito, whose relentless attack justified his nickname, the Tijuana Tornado. In a bout packed with riveting toe-to-toe exchanges, Margarito gathered strength in the later rounds, and his ceaseless pressure wore down Cotto. In the 11th Margarito floored him twice, and Cotto's corner threw in the towel. Margarito's extraordinary stamina (37-5-0 with 27 knockouts) is the fruit of a rigorous training regimen. Six days a week he rises at 6 a.m. to run at a municipal sports complex for 90 minutes before logging two hours of weight training at a downtown gym a few blocks from Tijuana's infamous red-light district. He wraps up the workout with two-hour sessions in the ring at Gimnasio Azteca. Growing up in a cramped hillside house in Tijuana's rough Zona Francisco Villa, Margarito shared two rooms with his mother, his father (a lamp salesman who moonlighted as a security guard), an older brother and three younger sisters. Young Antonio steered clear of the gangs that permeate impoverished Tijuana neighborhoods, spending most of his free time either at home or in the gym. As he became more focused on boxing—he turned pro at 15—several of his friends succumbed to gang violence or drug abuse. "At dawn when I stepped outside to run, I'd see some of them passed out in the alleyways, drunk or high on meth," he says. "One of the guys I hung out with as a kid was gunned down in jail and another in front of a pharmacy. A third caught a bullet in his house." Antonio's brother, Manuel, who trained alongside him and turned pro a year before Antonio did, was shot to death in his home in October 1999. The crime is still unsolved. Despite the violence that surrounds him in Tijuana—the border city has become a virtual war zone as local drug cartels battle each other and the authorities—and despite the new wealth and fame that have made him a potential target for criminals, Margarito has remained loyal to his hometown. He lives with his wife, Michelle, and two of her younger brothers just five minutes from his old barrio. While the champ has considered a move to the relative calm of a San Diego suburb, he's in no rush. In his Mercedes SUV he cruises the city streets as fearlessly as he enters the boxing ring, where he mauls the best fighters brave enough to step through the ropes.
It was actually true at the time. Mayorga wouldn't give him a fight nor would Spinks. Once Judah grabbed all the belts he wouldn't unify with Margarito either despite Margo creaming top prospect and KO artist Cintron. A fight that Margo was actually the underdog in despite being the Champion. Baldomir never gave him the chance to unify after his upset of Judah and neither would Mayweather after taking it off Baldomir. You can't blame Margo for feeling ducked as the general consensus is that he has been avoided by everyone with a name until FINALLY Cotto stepped up to the plate and we all basically saw what happened there.
