Margarito Out

I don't quite know what to make of the Antonio Margarito suspension. On the one hand, if he is going to be punished, one year seems like a fair sentence. It'll also take him out of a big-money fight, so it is a punishment with some teeth, unlike, say, Zab Judah's suspension, which merely delayed his comeback from the Mayweather loss by a few months. The hearing didn't remove the suspicion that he fought with loaded gloves against Cotto, Cintron, and any number of other fighters, but absent an admission that he had done so from one of the principals, it really couldn't.

At the same time, Margarito convinced me that he had no idea what was going on. At the risk of being a sucker, the fact that he offered his already loaded right hand to Naazim Richardson to show him that nothing was wrong demonstrates that he really had no idea. His evident shock at the outcome yesterday also supports that hypothesis. Boxers don't wrap their own hands, so this isn't the same thing as a baseball player saying he accidentally grabbed someone else's corked bat. Boxers really are just members of a team, and while they are the most important member, they aren't the team's supervisor. The idea that a boxer could have an unfair advantage without knowing is neither implausible nor unprecedented (see Aaron Pryor's special water against Alexis Arguello). Bob Arum's reaction, though a bit overheated, has some logic to it:

"It's the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced," Arum told ESPN.com. "It's not going to hold up. The commission determined that Antonio knew nothing and did nothing wrong, but that he is head of his team, so he's responsible for the trainer and, therefore, it is appropriate to revoke his license.

"How can you revoke somebody's license when they didn't do anything or wrong or attempt to do anything wrong?"

Fun detail from the episode: the inspector from the California commission charged with approving the wraps is named Che Guevara.