By Dan Rafael, ESPN.com
Antonio Margarito underwent successful surgery on his fractured right orbital bone at Methodist Hospital in Dallas on Tuesday, three days after Manny Pacquiao broke his face in a one-sided junior middleweight title bout at Cowboys Stadium.
"The doctor told us everything went perfect, no complications of any kind," co-manager Sergio Diaz said in a statement released by promoter Top Rank. "There is nothing wrong with his right eye. Antonio is such a warrior. The first thing he asked was, 'when can I start running,' and we told him he has to relax for a while."
Indeed, Margarito has been ordered to rest for at least 60 days without any contact.
Margarito will remain in the hospital overnight Tuesday and plans to return to Los Angeles on Wednesday with his team: wife Michel, co-managers Diaz and Francisco Espinoza and trainer Robert Garcia, all of whom have been with him since the fight.
Margarito also needed six stitches in his right cheek and three in his right eyebrow to close cuts.
Margarito, a three-time welterweight titlist, went the distance with Pacquiao but was punished throughout the fight despite outweighing Pacquiao by 17 pounds and having a 6-inch reach advantage and 4¼-inch height advantage.
Pacquiao won easily on all three scorecards -- 120-108, 119-109 and 118-110 -- to claim a vacant junior middleweight belt in a record-extending eighth weight division. Pacquiao is also the only fighter in boxing history to win titles in seven weight classes.
Pacquiao (52-3-2, 38 KOs) fractured Margarito's orbital bone in the fourth round, swelling his right eye and badly bruising it.
Pacquiao pounded on Margarito so severely that at one point in the 11th round he looked to referee Laurence Cole and asked him to stop the fight. After the fight, Pacquiao said he carried Margarito in the final round because he did not want to inflict anymore damage to him.
"I fought as hard as I could against a great champion in Manny Pacquiao," Margarito said.
"Can you believe it, he wanted to start running," Top Rank promoter Bob Arum told ESPN.com. "But he's not going to have any kind of training until at least February. He needs to rest."
Arum said he is not sure yet what kind of fight he will try to make for Margarito when he comes back.
He said he would like to make a rematch between Margarito (38-7, 27 KOs) and Miguel Cotto, who waged an epic fight in July 2008. Margarito stopped Cotto in the 11th round of the welterweight title fight. In Margarito's next fight, a ninth-round knockout loss to Shane Mosley in January 2009, Margarito was discovered to have loaded hand wraps in the dressing room before the fight. There are many who believe that he fought Cotto with loaded gloves because of the significant facial damage he inflicted on him.
"I always imagined Margarito and Cotto being a big fight again, but Cotto may not want to wait that long," Arum said, noting that Cotto probably will return in April, which is before Margarito likely would fight again.
Instead, Cotto, who won a junior middleweight belt in June, could face Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in April as long as Chavez defeats Alfonso Gomez in the main event of Top Rank's "In Harm's Way" pay-per-view card from Anaheim, Calif., on Dec. 4.
"Let's see how Chavez looks and if Chavez looks good on Dec. 4, maybe I'll make Cotto and Chavez," Arum said. "[Top Rank matchmaker] Bruce [Trampler] said he doesn't see any reason not to make that fight. So with Margarito, let's assume Cotto fights Chavez. I'll get Tony another fight and maybe he'll fight the Cotto-Chavez winner sometime in the fall."
Arum said he would also be interested in matching Margarito with middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, who is promoted by Lou DiBella, if Martinez defends his title against Paul Williams in their rematch on Saturday night (HBO, 10 ET) in Atlantic City, N.J. HBO will also replay Pacquiao-Margarito on the telecast.
Although Martinez is the middleweight champ and a former junior middleweight titleholder, he suffered his first career defeat in a 2000 welterweight fight when Margarito stopped him in the seventh round.
Arum is awaiting more pay-per-view totals from Pacquiao-Margarito, but based on what has already come in, he said the worst the fight would do is 1.25 million buys.
"We got the numbers from Dish Network and they were very, very good," Arum said. "The Dish Network number is bigger than the number we did for Pacquiao when he fought [Oscar] De La Hoya [in December 2008]. But we don't have the DirecTV number yet. But we have every indication from the cable systems that the numbers are very strong."
Dan Rafael is the boxing writer for ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter @danrafaelespn.
Source: sports.espn.go.com
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