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Becoming the Pete Rose of boxing

“The conduct of both Mr. Margarito and Mr. Capetillo was unacceptable and threatened the health and safety of another licensee.” – Carrie Lopez, Director, State of California Department of Consumer Affairs, Feb. 10, 2009

“We’ll figure out a fight for (Margarito) in Mexico. It will be on one of our pay-per-view shows this summer. I think we’d have the opportunity to do 200,000 or 300,000 buys.” – Bob Arum, CEO, Top Rank, Feb. 10, 2009

And so here we are, 506 days later, and Mexican Antonio Margarito is no nearer to having a license to fight in the United States than he was on the day his license was revoked. Has he “served his time” or “paid his debt to society” or “(insert courtroom drama cliché here)”? Irrelevant, your honor.

Right now, Margarito is no more permitted to climb in a prizefighting ring in this country than an eight year-old boy is allowed to take Dad’s car for a spin. He has no license. And he will not have a license until the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) gives him a license. Or until some other athletic commission determines California’s handling of his case is unjust enough to be overruled. The rest is just noise.

And there’s plenty of that.

On Friday, the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) refused to give Margarito a license and make the details go away. Instead, the NSAC told Margarito to go back to California with his application. Bravo. However you feel about Margarito’s innocence or guilt, you cannot condone a fighter shopping for a sympathetic commission – first Texas then Nevada – and still say you care about the cleanliness of our sport.

Margarito did not have his license suspended in California 17 months ago. He had his license revoked. Because the right to appeal is one of America’s defining traits, Margarito was told he could return to California in 365 days to ask for a new license.

Fighters have their licenses suspended all the time. Margarito has had his license suspended twice before. He had a one-week “rest” suspension in 2001 after he knocked out Robert West. He had a 45-day “hard fight” suspension in 2007 after he lost to Paul Williams. He attended no hearings, hired no attorneys, fired no trainers, and was back in a prizefighting ring on schedule.

Margarito knows the difference between the Spanish verbs “revocar” and “suspender.”

And yet, to hear him tell it to the NSAC on Friday, he’s already met every requirement for a new license, and he’s just been looking to swing by Austin or Las Vegas to pick up the license as a matter of convenience.

“I’ve paid a high price,” Margarito said Friday in Nevada. “But I think I’ve earned the right to come before you and respectfully request to receive my license and fight for my fans.”

To hear his attorneys tell it, Margarito is the victim of more sinister goings-on in the Golden State, as well as the victim of his former trainer Javier Capetillo, a contract worker who absconded with Margarito’s hands just before that 2009 fight with Shane Mosley and accidentally put the tiniest bit of slightly used gauze in Margarito’s knuckle pad. Attorney Daniel Petrocelli – to whom Margarito never should have given the pass code for his Apr. 5 conference call – views the CSAC’s treatment of Margarito as a direct violation of our country’s founding document, of course:

“About the contracts, Capetillo wasn’t an employee of (Margarito’s),” Petrocelli ruled three months ago. “You can’t be penalized because somebody did something without your knowledge or participation, let alone something as severe as taking away your right to earn a living (sic). That’s just unconstitutional.”

Right now, it’s hard to imagine how Margarito could have handled the revocation of his license and reputation much worse. From his disappearing act in 2009, to his lawsuit against the CSAC, to his lack of remorse, to his presenting himself as a victim, to Friday’s unsatisfactory conclusion, Margarito has put himself on a path to become boxing’s version of Pete Rose.

Rose, you’ll remember, was found to have bet on baseball and, in accordance with Rule 21(d) of Major League Baseball’s code, banned from the game in 1989. Since then, Rose has gradually admitted, usually in tortured language, to a variety of unscrupulous things – just never that for which he was banished.

He had a friend named Paul Janszen whom he called just before games and who placed calls to bookies from Rose’s hotel room.

“No, no, don’t start on the phone records,” Rose said in an interview with Sports Illustrated in 1999. “I am at the ballpark. So I can’t be in my room making a phone call if I’m at the ballpark. And it is obvious to me once again Paul Janszen is making bets, and he is making them from my room, because he had adjoining rooms with me.”

As things concern the plaster-like substance smeared on a pad that was placed over his knuckles, Margarito, too, was victimized by a person he trusted.

“Before the fight, my former trainer, Javier Capetillo, put old knuckle pads on my hand,” Margarito said Friday. “As I learned later, there was an irregularity with them.”

And this is where lawyers are a hindrance to Rose and Margarito, not a help. They give them words like “irregularity,” lend them their cloaks of certainty, and send them before panels to haggle over the difference between responsibility and culpability. But all anyone wants – all anyone will accept – is contrition.

Instead of contrition, Margarito, like Rose before him, presents his years as a well-liked professional as evidence that he’s incapable of wrongdoing. People loved Margarito because he fought in an unglamorous way. People loved Rose for running to first base every time he was walked. Trouble is, the admiration of others, which they cite, is gone by the time they cite it: I’m not sure I ever knew Antonio Margarito, are you?

There are a number of differences between Rose’s case and Margarito’s. Rose was a much larger figure in baseball than Margarito is in boxing. Rose made wagers. Margarito, or his trainer, plotted to harm another athlete. And most importantly for Margarito, Rose was retired from playing the game when all his troubles happened.

Margarito is 32 years-old. He’s past the prime of his career but was very much at its apex, in accomplishment and popularity, two years ago. If he’s not licensed to fight in the United States in 2010, he’ll lose what remains of his drawing power. That’s something he should consider while his attorneys assure him of victory in a case slowly making its way through the California Court of Appeals.

If the CSAC is injudiciously biased against Margarito, he needs to get them on the record saying something new and biased. What’s currently there is not persuasive enough for other commissions to overrule the CSAC.

But, see, it’s not overruling! It’s a brand new license to do something entirely different in a place that is not California. It’s unconstitutional to deny the man a right to feed his family!

That didn’t work Friday. And the NSAC just set a precedent that says it isn’t going to work later or elsewhere.

Writing of elsewhere, Margarito still can fight in Mexico, of course, because he’s licensed to fight there. But 50 percent more people were in Aguascalientes at his May return fight with Roberto Garcia than paid to see it on pay-per-view. Exit drawing power.

It’s time for Margarito to try something wholly different. The Spanish word for it is “contrición,” Tony.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry

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