By Chris Robinson

The latest news surrounding Antonio Margarito hasn't been the kindest as the former welterweight champion very well could be seeing his career coming to a premature ending. Margarito suffered a broken orbital bone and a possible detached retina in his last fight, a one-sided points loss to Manny Pacquiao last November, and is set to be seeing a specialist sometime this week to determine how severe the injury is.

It has definitely been a rollercoaster ride for Margarito the past few years, as he was the victim of some scathing criticism after being found to have tampered hand wraps before his January 2009 blowout loss to Shane Mosley. One fight prior Margarito had captured the biggest victory of his career with a come-from-behind 11th round TKO over Miguel Cotto at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas but saw all of that momentum halted with the Mosley defeat and it's connecting controversy.

Margarito began his professional career on January 14th, 1994 with a four-round decision over Jose Trujillo in his native Tijuana, Mexico. Margarito would end up losing three of his next eleven fights and his crude and limited style didn't seem to speak well for a fighter trying to make it in the big leagues.

To his credit Margarito would continue plugging away and started building up some hype on the West Coast as he ventured into America, fighting often in Southern California and occasionally in Las Vegas, even handing reigning middleweight champion Sergio Martinez his first defeat over ten years ago on the first Marco Antonio Barrera-Erik Morales undercard at the Mandalay Bay. Margarito's relentless style and suffocating attack definitely caught people's attention, to say the least.

Speaking on his early impressions of the 'Tijuana Tornado', boxing historian and HBO Sports' Bert Sugar remembers that there was a certain buzz about the come-forward fighter before his arrival.

"I always heard about him as the man everybody was trying to evade," said Sugar. "Nobody would sign to fight him. That was the context his name was mentioned in. Half the people could pronounce his name. They would call him Margarita, like the drink. You'd hear about him and the one thing they always labeled him was 'The man that no one would fight'."

But fight on Margarito would and he soon began gracing the airwaves of ESPN, Showtime, and HBO. In over ten years he would fight some formidable names between 147 and 154 pounds, losing a controversial technical decision to Daniel Santos in Puerto Rico in September of 2004 as well as dropping a barn burner to Paul Williams in July of 2007. But nestled around those defeats where resounding knockouts over the likes of Andre 'Six Heads' Lewis, Antonio Diaz, Kermit Cintron twice, Hercules Kyvelos, as well as decision victories over hard-nosed Danny Perez and Joshua Clottey.

In the summer of 2008 Margarito landed the fight of his dreams against Cotto, the undefeated star from Caguas, Puerto Rico. Things looked bleak for Margarito early as Cotto hit him with everything but the kitchen sink while boxing circles around him but he stayed focused and eventually began turning the tide of the fight before scoring two late round knockdowns and scoring his most significant win as a pro.

But instead of capitalizing on that victory his momentum was halted in controversial fashion in his subsequent fight against Mosley, where he was found to have elements of plaster of paris in his hand wraps in the dressing room before walking out for the fight.

Sugar was ringside for the contest and remembers hearing some chatter amongst press row about something taking place with Margarito's camp backstage yet he was confused as to what exactly.

"I heard so many times that the man demanded that his hands be re-wrapped," said Sugar. "Or that there is somebody in the room who demands that they be re-wrapped. It had happened in the Spinks-Tyson fight. So when you hear 'hand wraps' the last thing that you think is that somebody is loading their hand wraps."

Margarito would end up getting thoroughly trounced by Mosley, eating a huge amount of right-hand bombs throughout the night, but the dire nature of the loss paled in comparison to him being chastised by the boxing community following his illegal wraps scandal. Giving his take on the situation, Sugar still seems a bit perplexed to this day.

"They could have banned him for life and it wouldn't have bothered me," Sugar said bluntly. "It says something about the commission, who puts a man in the dressing room and it takes the opposite trainer, Naazim Richardson, to see it. What was the commissioner doing? Sleeping? Counting bricks on the wall? What was he doing?"

Margarito would be suspended by the California State Athletic Commission for a year and would resurface last May, winning a modest ten-round nod over Roberto Garcia in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Surprising to some, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum would angle him into a huge fight with Pacquiao later in the year, a showdown that ended up at Cowboys Stadium just outside of Dallas.
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While many were up in arms because of the fact that Margarito was set to make the biggest payday of his career following his hand wrap debacle, what took place inside of the ring was far more severe. Over the course of twelve rounds Pacquiao would bludgeon his aggressive foe with piercing shots from all angles, busting up his right eye and putting on one of the more savage beat downs in recent memory.

I asked Sugar whether or not he felt the fight should have been stopped and he was very adamant with his response.

"Oh yes," said Sugar. "Pacquiao thought so. He kept looking to the referee. He could have stopped it two rounds sooner and maybe saved him some eye injuries. The referee is their for the safety of the boxers, why let it go for the wonderful moral victory that he lasted? It's beyond me. You could see that he was a beaten man by round nine."

Upon hearing that Margarito's injuries from that fight may indeed cause an abrupt end to his career, many people online have been quick to say 'good riddance' and point to simple karma as to why this happened to Margarito. Sugar isn't so quick to join the bunch and feels that this is just how things played out for the 33-year old fighter.

"I can't really subscribe that to karma. I think they are two different things. One is a beating he took and one is a beating he may, against Cotto, may have netted out. But I don't see one canceling the other."

Chris Robinson is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. An archive of his work can be found here , and he can be reached at Trimond@aol.com