Miguel Cotto retained his WBA junior middleweight title Saturday, easily stopping challenger Antonio Margarito who was unable to continue because of a badly swollen right eye. The 31-year-old Puerto Rican champ Cotto improved to 37-2-0 with a dominating TKO victory at a sold-out Madison Square Garden as he avenged a controversial loss to Margarito three years ago. Cotto savored the victory over his bitter rival by staring down Margarito after the stoppage.
"Just to look at him and taste my victory on him," Cotto said. "He means nothing to me. I'm here with all my crowd and all my people. He means nothing to me."
Margarito took a pounding from Cotto and fought the last few rounds with his right eye shut, the result of a barrage of strategically aimed left hooks from Cotto. With Margarito's surgically-repaired eye getting worse each round, ring doctor Anthony Curreri stepped in to halt the fight in between the ninth and 10th rounds, giving Cotto the TKO win.
"It came to the point where there was no vision at all from the eye," Curreri said. "I think it would have been dangerous for him to go out there without any visual field. He did go quite a bit with the eye impaired."
It was the same eye that the 33-year-old Mexican fighter needed surgery to fix a fractured orbital bone after a lopsided loss to Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao in November 2010. Pacquiao took it easy on Margarito in their fight when it became apparent that Margarito's eye was badly damaged but Cotto showed him no mercy.
Crowd favourite Cotto was never seriously threatened Saturday as he earned a significant measure of payback against Margarito, who taunted Cotto throughout the build up to the fight, calling him a sore loser and questioning his manhood.
