Cotto vs Margarito 2008: The Eleventh-Round Towel, the Hand Wraps and the Garden Rematch

On 26 July 2008, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Antonio Margarito walked through Miguel Cotto's best boxing for ten rounds and broke him in the eleventh, taking the WBA welterweight title and Cotto's unbeaten record. It was hailed as one of the fights of the year. Six months later, what was found in Margarito's hand wraps in Los Angeles cast a shadow over that night that has never fully lifted.

An Unbeaten Champion and a Challenger Who Only Went Forward

Cotto came into the summer of 2008 as the WBA welterweight champion with a perfect record of 32-0, 26 of the wins inside the distance. The Puerto Rican from Caguas was 27, a disciplined boxer-puncher trained by his uncle, Evangelista Cotto, and the betting market made him roughly a 2-to-1 favourite.

Margarito, 30, from Tijuana, stood 36-5 with 26 knockouts. He was taller than Cotto, listed at five feet eleven against five feet eight, and his reputation rested on volume and attrition: he threw punches in bunches and kept throwing them, rarely taking a backward step. Both men weighed in at the 147-pound limit. Kenny Bayless was the referee, with Dave Moretti, Jerry Roth and Glen Hamada at ringside as judges, and an official crowd of 10,477 inside the arena.

Cotto's Jab and Movement Win the Early Rounds

For the first third of the fight, the favourite fought like one. Cotto moved, picked his punches and landed sharp combinations, and two of the three judges gave him four of the first five rounds. Even so, the warning signs came early. In the second round a Margarito right hand drove Cotto toward the ropes, and blood began to run from Cotto's nose. The fight film record compiled by The Fight City counts Margarito landing 33 of 90 punches in that round alone, a work rate that set the tone for the night. HBO's Jim Lampley captured the mood on the broadcast: "We promised violence…you're getting violence."

Margarito was warned twice for low blows in the third round, but the warnings did not slow him. Cotto relied on lateral movement to stay off the ropes, and by the closing seconds of the fifth he looked briefly unsteady, though he got through the round.

The Sixth and Seventh: Pressure Becomes Punishment

Margarito said afterwards that he had always planned to take control in the second half. According to Ron Borges's report for The Sweet Science, he told reporters that once the sixth round came, it was his time to press the action. That is what the fight looked like from ringside. Cotto still landed the cleaner single shots, but Margarito was busier and more committed, and in the seventh round CompuBox counted him throwing 130 punches, an extraordinary number for a welterweight that deep into a fight.

Cotto tried everything to stay out of the corners, at times switching between southpaw and orthodox stances and countering as Margarito came in. The pattern held through the eighth, ninth and tenth: Margarito advancing behind uppercuts, Cotto boxing on the retreat, his face increasingly marked. After ten rounds the fight was still close on paper. Two judges had Margarito ahead 96-94 and the third had it level.

The Eleventh Round and the Towel

The end came midway through the eleventh. A Margarito left uppercut stiffened Cotto, a right uppercut and two right hands followed, and Cotto dropped to a knee. He rose, but soon went down again without a fresh punch having landed, a fighter whose body had simply run out of answers. Rather than let him take any more, Evangelista Cotto threw in the towel. The official time was 2:05 of the eleventh round.

Margarito, now 37-5, had his third welterweight title and his biggest win. "I knew he was a better boxer but I am the heavier puncher," he said, as quoted by The Sweet Science. Cotto, cut and bleeding from the eye, nose and mouth, was sent to hospital by the commission and did not attend the post-fight press conference; promoter Bob Arum relayed the news. His statement was brief and gracious: "This was Margarito's night. He's an excellent fighter."

The praise was immediate. Referee Bayless called it the best fight he had worked, and Wikipedia's account gathers similar verdicts from ESPN's Dan Rafael and The Sporting News, the latter calling it the fight of the year. The pay-per-view drew around 450,000 buys. The result also had a commercial cost for Cotto: a planned big-money fight with Oscar De La Hoya fell away, and De La Hoya met Manny Pacquiao instead that December.

Staples Center, January 2009: What Was in the Wraps

Margarito's next fight was against Shane Mosley at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on 24 January 2009. In the dressing room beforehand, Mosley's trainer Naazim Richardson objected to Margarito's hand wraps. California inspector Dean Lohuis had them removed, and the knuckle pads inside were found to carry a hardened substance that laboratory analysis later described as similar to plaster of Paris. Margarito was rewrapped, fought, and was stopped by Mosley in the ninth round.

On 10 February 2009 the California State Athletic Commission revoked the licences of Margarito and his trainer, Javier Capetillo, for at least a year. Capetillo said he had made a mistake with the inserts; Margarito denied any knowledge and laid the blame on his trainer.

The question everyone asked was obvious: had the same thing happened against Cotto? Cotto's camp became convinced it had. The Fight City notes that a photograph later surfaced of Margarito's wraps from the Cotto fight that appeared to show plaster-like breakage and a red stain resembling the one on the confiscated Los Angeles wraps. No commission ever ruled on the 2008 fight, the result was never changed, and Margarito continued to deny wrongdoing. The suspicion is real and widely held; proof was never established in any official forum.

Madison Square Garden, December 2011: The Rematch

By the time the two met again, both careers had moved on. Cotto had rebuilt and now held the WBA title at 154 pounds; Margarito had returned from his ban, lost a unanimous decision to Pacquiao in November 2010 and needed surgery on a fractured orbital bone around his right eye. That injury nearly stopped the rematch. The New York State Athletic Commission initially refused Margarito a licence on medical grounds, citing the eye rather than the wraps, before an appeal and its own examination cleared him.

The fight took place on 3 December 2011 at Madison Square Garden, at a catchweight of 153 pounds, before a crowd of more than 21,000. Cotto boxed with clear purpose, jabbing at the damaged right eye. By the middle rounds it was swelling badly, and accounts agree it was effectively shut by the seventh. The ringside physician ended the fight as the tenth round began. Records differ on how to list it: most reports call it a tenth-round stoppage, while Wikipedia's fight article logs it as a ninth-round TKO because it was called between rounds. Reuters reported all three judges had Cotto ahead 89-82 at that point.

The ringside doctor quoted by Reuters, Barry Jordan, said Margarito's lid had been completely closed for three rounds. Margarito protested the stoppage. Cotto made his feelings plain to DNAinfo and others: "He means nothing to me."

A Classic With an Asterisk

Margarito announced his retirement in June 2012 at 38-8, though he later returned to the ring in 2016. The first fight remains a strange object in boxing history: by every account from that night a thrilling, brutal contest, and on the record a legitimate win for Margarito, yet one that many in the sport, Cotto included, have never been able to watch without wondering what was under the gloves.

Sources

• Miguel Cotto vs. Antonio Margarito, Wikipedia, accessed 2026
• Miguel Cotto vs. Antonio Margarito II, Wikipedia, accessed 2026
• Antonio Margarito, Wikipedia, accessed 2026
• Margarito Too Relentless, Takes Down Cotto, Ron Borges, The Sweet Science, 27 July 2008
• July 26, 2008: Cotto vs Margarito I, Eliott McCormick, The Fight City
• Antonio Margarito retires, Dan Rafael, ESPN, 7 June 2012
• Redemption: Miguel Cotto Stops Antonio Margarito in Rematch, Tim Starks, Queensberry Rules, 4 December 2011
• Cotto retains WBA title as bitter rival Margarito's eye closes up, Reuters via Gulf News, December 2011
• Cotto punishes Margarito in MSG boxing bout, Tom Liddy, DNAinfo New York, 4 December 2011