by Charles Jay
The E! Entertainment Channel will begin airing a show called “Kourtney & Kim” on November 27 (that’s this Sunday), which features, as one of its highlights, the marriage between Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries.
Oops.
Photo: Chris Farina/Top Rank
Top Rank had better luck on Tuesday, as, after one of those “doctor scares,” Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito will take Manhattan, Staten, and the rest of New York City on December 3 (that’s a week from Saturday) when they clash at Madison Square Garden.
At issue was the right eye of Margarito (known affectionately, I’m sure, among some fans as “Marga-cheato”), which has undergone surgical procedures to, among other things, remove cataracts.
Originally denied a license, New York state boxing officials came to their senses about Margarito, perhaps after they got on the horn with TicketMaster and found out that the Garden had sold 15,000 tickets.
Commerce must march on.
I’m not trying to be cynical about the whole thing, but hey, I’ve seen commissions at work, and know that big gates, and the big taxes and fees that come with them, don’t drop into your lap every day.
Some people just need some time to get a little more “clarity.”
I really have no idea about Margarito’s eye or the shape it’s going to be in; of course (have I mentioned this before?), it’s kind of ironic that there was concern about a fighter’s safety when that fighter himself seemingly had not the slightest concern about the safety of his fellow competitors by virtue of past actions; you know, the ones where the trainer gets blamed, as if the fighter had never put hand wraps on before in his life.
I’m speaking, of course, about Margarito trying to slip by with wraps made of plaster of paris before his fight with Shane Mosley, That would have been the equivalent, for those of you who are familiar with American sports and culture, of a “fumble-rooski” play. Okay, for the Mexicans out there, how about a “safety squeeze,”
The problem is, Margarito got thrown out at home plate.
Not that it would have mattered a whole lot, because as it turns out, he couldn’t hit the back of Mosley’s ass.
But Miguel Cotto engages a little more So he isn’t the type who is going to come away without getting hit.
I have no way of knowing for sure whether Margarito went in with loaded gloves when he fought Cotto the first time, in a bout the preceded the one with Mosley. But why would we believe that a fighter who loaded his hands wraps hadn’t done it before? Cotto was retreating in a manner that seemed out of character, and I’m thinking now it could have been due to the extra power Margarito seemed to have. Let’s face it – those punches do sometimes appear to take an hour and a half to get there, but they were landing heavy, and Cotto had welts on his face that were kind of unusual, relative to the punches he was taking.
They reminded me, to a smaller degree of course, of the welts Billy Collins had on his face after fighting Luis Resto. None of this is breaking news.
And so I’m thinking, gee, the New York commission doesn’t have the greatest history with this kind of thing, and then I saw that Cotto insisted on fighting Margarito in New York or not at all (for the same purse money anyway).
But on the other hand, I’m thinking, aside from the fact that Cotto knows he’s got an overwhelming crowd in his corner, at, well, the corner of 8th and 33rd, but he probably figures the officials in New York are never going to allow another Billy Collins happen again.
And if they were about to, he’s not going to let them.
