Following Terrible Beat Down from Pacquiao vs. Margarito results, Garcia’s Attitude is Part of an Ongoing Problem in Boxing:
In the post-fight interviews following Manny Pacquiao’s dominant win over Antonio Margarito, Margarito trainer Robert Garcia offered an unusual sentiment. He said he never considered stopping the bout, and that Margarito never would have allowed him to do it. Garcia offered the exact wrong answer to the question posed. Mr. Garcia, it’s your job to protect your fighter, even if he’s not going to like it. You’re not doing anybody a service by allowing a prolonged beating to be dished out, the type of in-ring punishment that is dangerously well documented, and could potentially lead to serious short term and long term consequences for the fighter involved.
Margarito is undergoing surgery to repair a broken right eye socket, an injury that was swollen to the point that his vision must have been nearly completely obstructed over the closing rounds of the battle. It was only adding to the severity of the punishment he was receiving, and the ease with which Pacquiao was connecting with his speedy assault. For Margarito, hopefully, a broken right eye socket is the only consequence of the battle, and of his trainer completely disregarding what his purpose on the ringside apron actually is.
Freddie Roach might be a biased source after the video with Margarito and company mocking him came out, but he said: “He has the worst corner. It probably ruined his career by not stopping the fight. He might never fight again. He took too many unnecessary punches.” And he’s right. There was no need for Margarito to continue walking forward, eating dozens of flush shots to the face over the final stanzas of the encounter.
Pacquiao was looking at the referee, Laurence Cole, to step in and stop the action. Cole didn’t do his job either, but that doesn’t come as a surprise, considering his questionable history as the third man in the ring during major fights. But what exactly was Garcia thinking? He had to uphold the Mexican tradition of being a warrior until the end? What if it actually was the end, and Margarito suffered a brain hemorrhage over the final two rounds of the contest as his face got rearranged and he got battered from one side of the ring to the other? Would he still look back on the fight and think to himself, I did the right thing, because Margarito wouldn’t have let me stop it regardless?
That’s nothing but an excuse for not doing your job. Your job is not just to prepare your fighter to win a fight, and to coach him to perform. It’s to protect him from himself, and to do the hard work of ending the night for your charge, even if he wants to continue. Even if he fires you afterward because you ignored his wishes. Even if it goes against the Mexican tough-guy protocol.
After the Margarito video came out, one of Roach’s reactions to it was that he said that he hopes it (developing Parkinson’s Disease) never happens to those guys, Margarito and Brandon Rios, like it happened to him. After Saturday night, and Garcia’s and Cole’s refusal to take action, let’s all hope that’s the case.
We now live in an age when concussions in the NFL have been getting massive attention in the media, and teams have been forced to redraw their policies on how to handle such situations. There are disturbing, hard facts about what happens to the human brain after undergoing repeated trauma to the head. The kind of trauma that boxers make their livelihood on, and while it might be slow-breaking news in the world of football, it’s been omnipresent in the history of boxing since the sport’s inception. If anyone should know better, it should be the trainers, referees and doctors on hand for a fight, who collectively are guarding the life and well-being of every fighter who steps through those ropes.
As Margarito lies in a hospital recovering from the encounter, and Garcia cashes his fat check for serving as trainer, he should pause for a minute and ask himself if he really earned that money. As round 10 turned into round 11, and then round 12, it become blatantly obvious that he did not. Garcia blissfully and willfully ignored every ounce of common sense, every piece of medical data, every bit of actual care for his fighter, or duty to his profession, and let Margarito continue walking out as fodder to Pacquiao’s attack. You never would have considered stopping the bout, Mr. Garcia? Really?
