LAS VEGAS -- This week Antonio Margarito had a long talk with his brother, as he does before every big fight.
The two boxers chatted about everything and nothing, the way close brothers do when one's scared and the other's worried. And there'd be nothing unusual about any of this if not for the fact that Antonio Margarito's brother Manuel has been dead for eight years, shot in the back of the head in his Tijuana home.
"I'm always thinking of him," Margarito said. "One incredible thing about that is whenever a fight is near, I always dream of him. They're very realistic dreams. It's like he's right there with me."
He'll be with him again tonight when Margarito (36-5, 26 knockouts) climbs into the ring at the MGM Grand to face WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-0, 26 KOs) in the biggest fight of his 15-year professional career.
Not only is Margarito guaranteed at least $1.6 million, by far the most he has ever earned, but a victory over the heavily favored Cotto could lead to even more lucrative fights against Oscar De La Hoya or Floyd Mayweather Jr., should he decide to come out of retirement.
It has been a long climb for Margarito, who was born in Torrance but grew up in a poor, lawless neighborhood in Tijuana. When he was in grade school his father introduced him and his brother to boxing and soon the boys were going straight from school to the gym.
After a while, they skipped the school part and just went to the gym. Their father agreed to look the other way as long as they gave everything they had to the sport.
"My dad told me there's a phrase that says anybody can be part of a group but to be a success you have to work harder," Margarito said in Spanish. "I always remembered that." Out of the ring, with his thick horn-rimmed glasses, the 30-year-old Margarito looks like an MBA student or an accountant. But the truth is, after dropping out of school in junior high, he became a pro fighter at 15 because he needed the money.
And though he won eight of his first nine fights, the bouts, all in northern Mexico, paid little. So Margarito made himself a promise: if he ever made money in the ring he would skip the cars and the bling and spend it on a house, something no one could take away from him.
"After that could come the cars or whatever," he said. "But first was going to come the house. And thank God I have it now."
