Cotto wins as fight is stopped after ninth

Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito demonstrated the savage geometry of fitting roundhouse punches into a square ring early Sunday morning. For the gratification of a fevered, howling crowd packed into Madison Square Garden past midnight, Cotto emerged as the WBA's world junior middleweight title when referee Steve Smoger wouldn't let the battered Margarito come out for the 10th round of a brutally aggressive encounter.

Cotto's rat-tat-tat jabs had drawn blood from Margarito's right eye -- the one surgically repaired with an artificial lens after a cataract was removed -- as early as the third round. With the eye completely closed in the seventh, though Margarito continued to stalk Cotto around the ring to land heavy body blows, Cotto went on assaulting Margarito's head, steadily dimming Margarito's lights.

That led to Dr. Anthony Curreri's second between-rounds examination of Margarito's eye after the ninth round and prompted Smoger's TKO call, even as Margarito's corner insisted it "just needed one round to beat this guy.''

"The eye was completely shut and he couldn't go on,'' Smoger said. "We were vacillating a little bit, but I prevailed. The corner was begging for another round. But we have a rule in the state of New York: If you can't see, you have to stop the fight.''

Cotto declared himself "glad that this is all over and this is behind me. Now I can move on.''

Cotto, the 30-year-old Puerto Rican, and Margarito, 36, of Mexico, had made it abundantly clear that the rematch of their bloody 2008 Las Vegas brawl would be no friendly competition. Then they set about proving it, each attempting to separate the other's soul from his body, each trying to put the other on desolation row.

The 5-8 Cotto gave away three inches to his 5-11 rival but immediately initiated the roughshod event with stinging jabs and combinations, repeatedly dancing away from Margarito, even as he delivered a series of one-for-the-road punches each time he pulled back. Margarito was credited with far more punches thrown -- 700 to 493 -- but landed only 157 to Cotto's 210. Though Margarito often shook his head to contend that Cotto's blows weren't hurting him, Cotto was awarded eight of the nine rounds by the judges and was ahead on all three cards, 89-82, when it was stopped.

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The crowd of 21,239 was decidedly in Cotto's corner, unfurling Puerto Rican flags throughout the building and bellowing cheers after each punch landed by Cotto. Margarito, in sequined red-and-green shorts and cornrows, was demonstrating an ability to absorb plenty of punishment from the quicker Cotto, whose shaved head and blue-and-yellow shorts were more difficult to catch.

But there was no standing around by either man, each tattooing the other's abundant body tattoos, which only seemed natural to Bob Arum, the 80-year-old Top Rank promoter, who compared the dislike Cotto and Magarito have for each other to Marvin Hagler's contempt for Thomas Hearns. Those two "almost got into a fistfight'' during a pre-bout appearance, Arum said of Hagler-Hearns. "They hated each other. Marvin kept saying, 'I don't want to be in the same room with him.' ''

Margarito had bridled at Cotto's description of him as a "criminal'' before the bout, a reference to accusations that Margarito had previously used illegal hand wraps, and insisted that Cotto "hits like a little girl.'' Cotto answered that Margarito was "an embarrassment to boxing.''

On the undercard, cruiserweight Sean Monaghan of Long Beach knocked out Santos Martinez of Adrian, Mich., at 2:56 of the second round, Monaghan's eighth knockout in his still-perfect 11-0-0 career. Junior welterweight Mike Ruiz (15-7-0), a Puerto Rican native who fights out of Hempstead, left on entirely different terms, knocked out by Glen Tapia of Passaic, N.J., at 2:27 of the second round.

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Delvin Rodriguez (26-5-3) of Danbury, Conn., won a 10-round decision over Pawel Wolak of Mt. Arlington, N.J., for the IBA intercontinental junior middleweight title.

In the night's co-feature, a scheduled 12-round WBA lightweight title match, reigning champ Brandon Rios failed to make the 135-pound weight limit and was dethroned before he fought England's John Murray. The fight went on and Rios, repeatedly bloodying Murray's face, won by TKO with 54 seconds left in the 12th. The title therefore will remain vacant.