We forgive everyone else, why not Antonio Margarito?

Doesn’t change my mind, but it certainly made me think.

 I’m not positive that I could properly explain why, but plaster and PED’s are not equal offenses in my opinion.

Similarly there has been no attempt to question the legitimacy of any victories achieved by Mosley, Toney, Vargas or Jones

Yes there has. There is a fairly huge asterisk over one of Mosley’s wins over De La Hoya because of his PED usage.

Additionally, your comparison of PED usage to loading gloves seems flawed to me. The BALCO PEDs being used by Mosley were used to boost endurance and stamina, sure they allowed Mosley to hit as hard, for longer, but they didn’t boost the damaging effect of his punches beyond what it usually was.

In my mind I can’t forgive Margarito as I can’t get beyond the fact that he attempted to put Mosley’s life at risk. Anyone who walks into the ring is risking their health and life, this shouldn’t be made more dangerous through illegal handwrapping.

It damages the opponent, it damages the division, and it damages the sport. I see it as the greatest crime in boxing and I will not offer the hand of forgiveness to Maragrito.

This is like forgiving Luis Resto and Panama Lewis. That won’t happen. And neither will forgiving Cheatarito.

When they got caught to say, hey I fucked up.

I want to preface my comments by saying that I don’t necessarily believe that Margarito deserves to be, or doesn’t deserve to be pardoned. I don’t believe that what he did was automatically better or worse than what Shane Mosely did before the second DLH fight. I just want to rebut what seems to be the general sentiment among the posters.

It seems like everyone in this thread is saying that PED’s aren’t that big of a deal. “PED’s are a competitive advantage that does not win the fight or immediately place their opponent in serious danger”. “It’s always conceivable that you could be in the ring with a guy who naturally has the muscles that steroids could give him or naturally has the stamina EPO could give him”. “It just puts some extra wind in your sails”.

That is bullshit. Steroid use gives you sudden and dramatic gains in strength, power, and explosiveness. How dramatic? Let me quote a great article written by a doctor at Sherdog.com (the largest MMA site in the world). The article is The Benefit and Cost of Steroids – and I recommend that everyone read it.

It showed two dramatic findings: first, steroids work. Unquestionably and dramatically. Aside from the astronomic international medal count of a tiny nation with little genetic diversity and a third world economy, the data shows quantifiable individual performance improvements. With steroids, 100-meter sprint times were cut almost three quarters of a second — the difference between a world champion and a runner whose career ends in college. Athletes on steroids put the shot an additional two to five meters (World Record: 23.12m), hurled the javelin eight to 15 meters farther (WR:72.2m) and added as much as 20 meters to their discus throws (WR:74.1m).

So essentially steroids can turn someone who is merely very good at something, into one of the absolute best in the world. If you are already one of the hardest punchers in the world this thought is scary. Shane Mosely used both “the cream” (an anabolic steroid) and “the clear” (a masking agent) from BALCO labs. The purpose of these are to become more explosive and powerful. In boxing that means to become a harder puncher. You are probably familiar with the cream and the clear because they were Barry Bonds’ steroid of choice.

The other thing that Shane Mosely used before his second fight with De La Hoya is EPO, which is an endurance booster traditionally used in sports like Marathon and Bicycle Racing. This is used to increase your red blood cells, allowing you to go longer without getting tired.

In boxing most of the tragedies that occur do so after long, protracted fights. That is, it is normally the accumulation of damage that ends up causing brain bleeds and death, and generally not the massive first round KO. That is why we don’t have 15 rounders anymore (Duk Koo Kim).

The ability to maintain your power and your output into the later rounds as your opponent begins to fade is not only an enormous advantage, but it is enormously dangerous. Particularly if you already have increased power from Steroids. Steroids and Blood Boosters are both useful and dangerous individually, but together the effects are magnified.

I am not trying to say that the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs is worse than loading your gloves, and I hope you didn’t get that impression. But I was blown away by seemingly everyone acting like PED’s weren’t really that big of a deal. Because they can end careers, and change lives.

In a sport where the goal is to beat your opponent into unconsciousness, in a sport which is unquestionably already one of the most dangerous in the world, we all need to be very aware of all of the ways that one combatant can gain a dangerous and unfair advantage over another, and we should treat them all as very serious offenses. Or the sport that we all love may not be here tomorrow. And our heroes may not live to fight another day.

What Margarito’s detractors fail to acknowledge is he landed an astonishing 237 power punches.

Shane Mosley landed 177 power punches and 71 jabs on Cotto, and Cotto left that fight without a scratch. Did just 60 power punches really make the difference? If not, what did?

A number of boxing fans incorrectly compare Margarito and Capetillo’s actions to those of Luis Resto and Panama Lewis which ended the career of welterweight prospect Billy Collins. While it is true that Resto’s hand wraps were dipped in plaster, this was performed as an addition to the removal of two ounces of padding from Resto’s gloves. It was for the latter offence that both Lewis and Resto were convicted and why the tragic fight lives in infamy. Some would have you believe that the actions of Luis Resto and Antonio Margarito are the same which is nigh on ridiculous.

This is not accurate. Look, after Drath’s idiotic, vile documentary, Resto went to Dempsey’s to “unburden his soul” about everthing that supposedly happened that night. This is because Drath put the notion in his head that people would support him if he confessed. He seemed to like confessing so much that I believe he started to confess shit that never happened, like plastering his fists. The rat was just trying to get a little more time in spotlight, that’s all. If you want odds on the truthfulness of the plaster story, just consider the source.

The padding was removed from his gloves. That’s what he and Panama did, and that was bad enough. Of course, what Resto did was also slightly riskier to himself than what Margs did. Removing the padding increases the risks to hand injury even more than it increases the impact of your punches. But Margs had the protective padding of the glove over knuckle inserts that would harden into casts over the course of the fight. He turned his fists into potentially lethal, secret weapons with few drawbacks for himself. He is slime.

The difference between EPO and handwraps to me, is like the difference between being able to throw 14 rounds of standard punches within 12 rounds…

…and the difference between throwing ball peen hammers at your opponent.

We have Collins’ face and, yes, Cotto’s face, burned in our minds. There is no similar image of, I dunno, Ruiz’s face after the NC Toney fight. We have yet to have someone we can point to saying, “That guy there, he had his career/life ruined because that other guy took steroids.” Judging from a lot of data points, steroids, like EPO, are more about endurance (this time, during workouts) than they are an instant power-up, like the ball peen hammer hands, or the mighty infamous B-side meth.

This doesn’t mean steroids aren’t wrong. It’s just the reason why I forgave Toney and Mosley and will never forgive Margarito, whose offense far more easily could have killed a man.

And Margarito STILL insists he did nothing wrong. That’s like BIll Clinton still saying he didn’t have sex with that fat intern. Even Luis Resto admitted his gloves were loaded against Collins.

When Margo owns up to what he did, then we can forgive him. But not until then.

say what you want about ped’s and how its just as bad as loaded hand wraps (its not, not even close) that argument can go on forever.

The fact is Margarito deserves no sympathy nor forgiveness for his actions.

The silliest point in the original post is this one:

This is not a defence for Margarito.

Um, yes it is. It’s a fairly lengthy defense of Margarito followed by the claim that it is not a defense of Margarito. Sure, you acknowledge that what he did was wrong, but it’s plain as day to anyone reading the post that you are defending Margarito on the grounds that other boxers have broken the rules, and fans have forgiven them.

You obviously but ineffectively defend Margarito based on the notion that the offenses of those like Toney and Mosley are no worse than what Margarito did. But as several commenters above have amply demonstrated with logic, images, and common sense (the “which guy would you rather fighr” argument), Mararito’s offesne was not the same as Toney and Mosley’s. The results, as demonstrated by the images above, are plain to see.

So yes, this is clearly a defense of Margarito. But it’s a defense that doesn’t pass muster.

I want to clarify to newer readers of BLH that this post was not written by any of the regular (or in my case, embarrassingly, not so regular) contributors or editors at Bad Left Hook. This post was written by one of our valued readers and promoted to the front page by Scott, the founder and senior editor of the site. At the bottom of the post, you’ll find this perfunctory remark in microscopic font:

FanPosts do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors of Bad Left Hook or SB Nation. They might, though.

Speaking for myself, this post most definitely does not represent my views in any way. I would also rather not have seen it on the front page, but that is not my decision. I would regret if a casual reader checking out the site were to read this post, not notice the disclaimer, and assume it represents my view in any way, shape, or form. There is a fine line between valuing alternate viewpoints and allowing yourself to used for specious and, I believe in this case, dangerous arguments.

And do so over and over and over until people stop spreading this falsity:

[he] completed his suspension

No, see, he didn’t. His suspension WAS NOT for one year. That was simply the time at which he was allowed to reapply for a license. Which he did, in Texas. And it was denied.

He is still without a license in any U.S. state or territory. That the Mexican commissions allow him to fight is not an indicator that he “completed his suspension.” The revocation of his license was indefinite, but he was allowed to reapply after a year, not with the guarantee that he’d receive a new license.

taking ped’s is not the same as loading your gloves.

fail.

Reading this didnt change the way I feel about Margarito but it did made me re think about it

Margo was one of my favorites, but he betrayed me and most of his other fans by doing what he did. For that, I do not want to see him fight in the U.S.. What he does in Mexico or any other counrty is of no concern to me.

The thing that bothers me the most is his lack of remorse. Therefore, no remorse, no sympathy.

Simple. Because loading gloves (or attempting to in Margo’s case) is the most treacherous act of cowardice in boxing. Like bringing a gun to a fist fight. PED users are seen as frauds. Coward vs Fraud. That’s my take.

No way I was going to read all of that reply, but, this line struck me as funny:

The same is true of Stanozolol which is the drug Toney (twice) and Vargas used. It causes strength gain without water retention or excessive weight gain

Hahaha.

Here he is hauling out "#3":

As for my comment about the Cotto fight I can’t say with certainty whether Margarito loaded his gloves or not. I stated in my article that I find it unlikely that commissions, referees and trainers can miss loaded wraps all the way from Lujan upto Mosley. That’s nine fights of incompetence that some of you claim. The California Athletic State Commission is notorious for its incompetence and pictures of a battered Lujan and Cotto are not concrete evidence but mere speculation but I simply stated my opinion and didn’t claim it as fact.

In other words:

3) Alright he rocked his wraps, I guess, but there’s no proof he did it against Cotto!

Look, I think this horse has ridden as far as it will go. The post is fairly transparent, and sounds like it could’ve been written a year ago. Nothing new has been raised here, just more vague accusations of hypocrisy. Show me a popular fighter who was caught loading his gloves with cement and forgiven, and then you can start calling people hypocrites with obnoxiuous 10,000 word screeds. So far, the only folks who have signed onto this mess are steroid "experts" who know nothing about boxing and a few kids on their moral hobby horses. Soon it will be the a same typical cranks coming out of the woodwork to proclaim Margarito’s innocence, their unswerving faith in NYSAC and the triumphant return of the Tijuana Tornado.

I’m with Miller. This whole thing was a bad idea, letting guys use BLH as a free soapbox to talk about "Oh the hypocrisy!" Makes me want to puke.

Performance-enhancing drugs are a far more frequently-occuring problem in boxing than loaded wraps. I am not saying we should diminish what Margarito and Javier Capetillo attempted to do last January, or what they may have (and in my opinion, almost surely) did before. I am not even saying one really has anything to do with the other (plaster and PEDs, I mean), because they don’t have anything to do with each other.

Well, that’s it exactly. They have nothing to do with each other. I don’t mind having discussions about PEDs and their effects on the sport. But when talk of PEDs enters a conversation about Margarito and his crime, it is transparently obvious (at least to me) that whoever brings them up isn’t serious about either glvoe-loading or PEDs. They are trying to dull the blade of what Tony did by bringing up other dark corners of the sport for comparison. I don’t like it when people do this to support any argument, not just boxing. It’s a slippery way of going about things, like “well I can’t really defend this guy, so instead I’m going to drag down everyone else into the slime to make him look better.” He also says a couple of times that he thinks it’s unlikely Margs ever loaded before, which fails the reality test. It’s no surprise that these two arguments always go hand in hand.

Was he cheating throughout that entire career?

It’s anyone’s guess when it started. Could’ve been his whole career, sure. I’m skeptical that it could’ve been just that one fight. Heck, don’t you remember Cap talking about how they “prepared” his gauze the same way they “always prepared it?” Sure you have to consider the source, but then again when you consider that source you get a man who tried to hide illegal weapons inside his fighter’s gloves. The idea that the devil just crept into him that one night seems odds to me. Also odd, the way Tony’s cutman asked him in R3 of the Cotto fight “Como esta la pegada?” and Tony telling him he didn’t know. There is just too much nonsense there for me to just say throw up my hands and say “Oh well, we’ll never know for sure.” To me it’s not about “Margarito doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt”, even though he doesn’t. To me it’s just about I have got to form an opinion on the evidence in front of me. Looks and quacks like a duck to me.

according to a lot of folks in prison, the devil just crept into them for one night.

And for how many of them is it actually true?

Margarito’s plaster could have seriously killed or ended someone’s career. Who knows how long he was using it for. I cannot forgive someone that would do that to someone else.

But you could make a pretty decent argument that its in the" entertainment " industry more than its a sport . Cheers Bristol. As for Margocheato , the bloke and his team are lowlifes but I dont really care if he fights again. At least his gloves will be well scrutinised . He’s toast anyway . His chin is gone , he cant make 147 anymore and after the Mosely fight his aura of indestructability is gone .