Antonio Margarito Keeps Olympic Dreams Alive for Four Young Hopefuls

Added on Sep 30, 2010 by Brian Blake in

Boxing

Most fans of the sweet science will not soon forget the infamous hand wrapping incident involving Antonio Margarito and then-trainer Javier Ceptillo prior to his 2009 loss to Sugar Shane Mosley.

On top of being stopped late in the fight, the fallout of the scandal continued to haunt him in the form of a year long suspension as well as countless less than favorable headlines.

While his career got back on track with a recent win followed by the upcoming opportunity to fight the Pound For Pound king Manny Pacquiao, his image and reputation outside of the ring understandably is still suffering.

Make no mistake about it, what he and Cepetillo did prior to the Mosley fight is unacceptable, but he still deserves some recognition in the help he offered up to four young Unites States Olympic hopefuls this week.

The families of the four young pugilists recently held a fundraiser with the hope of raising enough money to send the kids to the National PAL Championships in San Antonio, Texas. After selling items ranging from tamales to bracelets a meager $300 was raised in all.

Upon hearing of the unfortunate results, Antonio Margarito took it upon himself to make sure these kids weren’t left behind due to financial hurdles.

He took time out of his intense training schedule for his looming date with Pacquiao to meet up with the four hopefuls at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy in Oxnard, California to present the kids with a check to cover airfare and lodging expenses necessary for them to compete at the San Antonio event.

When asked why he did it Margarito stated, “I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to have a dream crushed because you have no money”.

There is no guarantee that these aspiring Olympians event make it to the London games in 2012, but at least now they’ll have the opportunity to give it a shot.

Margarito without a shadow of a doubt lost an abundance of fans in the past year but it’s safe to say he made four of them this week.