Margarito Eyes Cotto Rematch, Mosley Wrongdoing Denied
By Mark Vester
Francisco Espinoza, co-manager of Antonio Margarito, says his fighter is still looking ahead to a June rematch with Miguel Cotto. The rematch plan was in place long before Margarito’s knockout loss to Shane Mosley last Saturday in California. Unless Top Rank has another plan, Espinoza expects for that fight to happen.
“We are interested in the fight with Cotto, but we have to see what the promoters say. If it won’t be Cotto then we will look for another opponent, but we would like to fight Cotto again,” Espinoza said to Primera Hora.
Evangelista Cotto, Miguel’s uncle and trainer, may have other plans. Cotto won a decision over Molsey in 2007 and a rematch is a good possibility. But Arum had previously said in other interviews that win or lose against Mosley, Margarito would still have a rematch with Cotto.
“A rematch with Mosley is attractive to us. When we speak with Bob Arum, we will know what is going to happen.but first we have to beat [Michael] Jennings who is a good boxer and we cannot get distracted,” Evangelista said.
Espinoza touched on the hand wraps controversy with Margarito. Last Saturday, 30-minutes before Margarito would head to the ring to fight Mosley, a “plaster-like” material was found in Margarito’s wraps by an inspector for the California State Athletic Commission. Mosley’s trainer, Nazim Richardson, saw something strange with Margarito’s wraps and asked to feel them.
“When he put the wrapping on, I asked if I could feel it and when I felt it, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is too hard,’ ” Richardson said to Yahoo Sports.
“When the commission flipped the [tape] over, a little block of gauze-like plaster fell out. I said, ‘Unwrap the other hand,’ and they were saying, ‘Oh, oh, the other hand is good.’ I asked the commissioner, ‘What if I unwrap the other hand at the end of the fight and it falls out of there, too?’
Dean Lohuis, the co-interim executive director of the California State Athletic Commission, told Yahoo Sports that both pieces of the plaster-like material were slipped in underneath the legal tape that was already placed on Margarito’s hands by his trainer Javier Capetillo. Mosley’s attorney Judd Burstein had to arrive in the dressing room before a member of the commission put the pieces in a box and handed them to Lohuis.
“[Richardson] made them unwrap it. And when they unwrapped the other hand, another one fell out. It was wet with a little plaster on it.”
Margarito had to rewrap his hands three times before they were deemed legal.
Espinoza says that nobody on Margarito’s team did anything illegal and everything will be cleared up when the California commission is done with their investigation.
"We did not do anything illegal. What happened was that Capetillo prepared the gauzes that are used, two weeks before [the fight] and had them in a lump with cloth that apparently was humid and therefore hardened,” Espinoza said. “There was no substance like that there [the plaster]. The commission asked us to bandage his hands again and we did.”
