December 03, 2011

The bad blood between junior middleweight titlist Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito heading into their grudge rematch is so fierce, so real and so palpable that Top Rank promoter Bob Arum did something almost unheard of at Wednesday’s final news conference. He refused the time-honored tradition of having the fighters pose face to face for the legion of photographers seeking the money image that would be splashed across their publications to publicize the fight. Junior middleweights: Miguel Cotto (36-2, 29 KOs) vs. Antonio Margarito (38-7, 27 KOs), 12 rounds,  With the intense bad feelings the fighters hold toward each other, Arum and his staff figured, why risk a physical confrontation? So Arum stood between them instead.