Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito ready for 'a great war'

They will get to the sticks and stones late Saturday night, in their super welterweight world title bout at Madison Square Garden. For yesterday's pre-fight news conference, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito just used words. Meant to hurt.

The typically choreographed promotion clearly had a sincere edge to it. With both camps and fight officials throwing around the word "war," Margarito -- alternating between a wide smile and a snarl -- dismissed Cotto as hitting "like a little girl" while the consistently stone-faced Puerto Rican Cotto called Mexico's Margarito an "embarrassment to boxing."

If their public display of dislike was a put-on to sell tickets, it hardly was necessary. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum said the event was "basically sold out," with only 200 tickets (priced from $600 to $50) still available in the refurbished Garden for an expected crowd in excess of 18,000.

The Cotto-Margarito back story is a fairly common one for prizefighting, the rematch of a bloody 2008 Las Vegas brawl eventually won by Margarito in which Cotto accused Margarito of loading his hand wraps with plaster. Margarito, in fact, currently is suspended from fighting in California, where a former trainer was found to have put something akin to a cast inside Margarito's gloves against Sugar Shane Mosley.

Just to add to the element of danger, Margarito underwent surgery in May, when a cataract was removed from his right eye and an artificial lens implanted. He was cleared to fight only nine days ago by the New York State Athletic Commission.

"This bout is going to be a great war, a big, big, big fight," said Margarito's manager, Sergio Diaz. "This is personal to both of them. So no one should miss this fight."

Margarito, dressed in a sweater, jeans and sunglasses, began by declaring, in Spanish, "Here comes a criminal. Open the doors for a criminal."

He accused Cotto of having hung that description on him for no good reason, and said that Cotto "says he's not going to have mercy on my eye. He could hit my eye as many times as he wants. He hits like a little girl. A super flyweight hits harder. He wants to take it personal; I take it very personal, too."

Cotto, decked out in a gray suit and purple tie, then told the gathering of reporters and cheering, whistling backers that he also would speak in Spanish "so Antonio receives the message from me."

Turning to Margarito, Cotto advised, "If you don't know what 'criminal' means, you can look it up in the dictionary. It's someone who uses a weapon" -- a reference to the hard wraps. Nonverbal jabs to come.