Final Bell

It appears there's nothing standing in the way for Steve Molitor to compete in the biggest fight of his life, in his home ring.

The Canadian holds the International Boxing Federation belt and after five defences, will likely take on Celestino Caballero, the World Boxing Association beltholder.

Caballero easily removed the last hurdle, knocking out patsy Elvis Mejia in one round last week at the WBA's "KO Drugs" fight card/charity event in Panama (I can't make this stuff up).

You could see the end coming but it was shocking just the same.

Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto, who pounded nearly all of his 32 previous foes into submission with a steely determination, was reduced to turning his body 180 degrees to avoid the thundering blows of Antonio Margarito in the 11th round of their epic welterweight bout Saturday night in Las Vegas.

Cotto wasn't knocked out. Worse than that, the Tijuana Tornado completely ground him down.

Welterweights Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito will clash Saturday night at MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas, the most anticipated fight of all 2008 for many hardcore boxing fans.

There will be bigger bouts the rest of the year in terms of public attention - Oscar De La Hoya versus TBA in his stated career-ending fight, perhaps even Kelly Pavlik against Bernard Hopkins or Sam Peter against Vitaly Klitschko, but Cotto-Margarito has had fans salivating since first mentioned as a real possibility two years ago.

An impressive performance by the winner will have fans demanding unbeaten Floyd Mayweather end his recently announced retirement for a 147-pound superfight in 2009.

It sounds strange to say for an undefeated champion, but Quebec boxer Joachim Alcine has a lot to prove heading into his second junior middleweight title defence Friday at Uniprix Stadium in Montreal against Daniel Santos of Puerto Rico.

The fight will be televised Friday night on Radio Canada.

Alcine performed the impressive feat of winning the title in Tarvis Simms's hometown last summer, but it was an ugly fight stylistically.

Alcine then made his first defence in Montreal in December with a 12th round stoppage over Alfonso Mosquera, an unimposing challenger who should have been and had been in the past stopped earlier. Alcine chalked up the slow start to nerves defending his title for the first time in his home, and that's an acceptable excuse.

He'll likely have to put in a career-best performance to turn back the challenge of Santos.

Manny Pacquiao will find out if he's bitten off more than he can chew when he makes his 135 pound lightweight debut Saturday night in Las Vegas against tough David Diaz.

Five pounds might not seen like that much for Pacman to gobble up, but it's important to remember the exciting power puncher began at 112 pounds, five or six weight classes south of Saturday's fight, depending on how many of those divisions you deem legitimate.

Not only is a fighter's effectiveness generally reduced with each higher weight class, age could be a factor sooner rather than later for the Filipino. While at 29 Pacquiao is younger than Diaz, he's been fighting professionally since 1995.

Ricky Hatton will try and bounce back from the only loss of his pro boxing career Saturday in Manchester Stadium.

Hatton (43-1, 30 KOs) returns to his roots, fighting for the first time in England since late 2005, and the first fight in his hometown since his stirring title win over Kostya Tsyzu in June of that year.

After a razor-close win over Luis Collazo and a 10th-round stoppage loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr., it's been clearly shown that Hatton is no welterweight.

He will be back down at the 140-pound limit, taking on Mexican-born, Texas-based Juan Lazcano 37-4-1 (27 KOs).

There has been a long and fascinating history in boxing involving the light heavyweight (175 pound) and heavyweight divisions. For decades, great champions like Billy Conn and Bob Foster were among those who could gain no toehold with boxing's big men, losing by definitive knockout to the likes of Joe Louis and Joe Frazier.

Michael Spinks broke the jinx of light heavies moving up in weight with a pair of controversial decisions over Larry Holmes in the mid-1980s.

In recent years, Roy Jones Jr. and James Toney ended up in the heavyweight division, despite starting their careers as middleweights.

Oscar De La Hoya is back for his annual springtime return to the ring on Saturday, in the home field of fellow celebrity/athlete David Beckham at Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.

Oscar said in a chat with LA Times readers this week that he's "feeling better than ever" prior to what is supposed to be a tune-up against Steve Forbes, which by my count is the 26th time since he became a contender that he's proclaimed himself "feeling better than ever."

De La Hoya, 35, has been making much noise about ending his career this year with a bang. After Forbes, the plan is to take on Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a rematch in September and then fight Miguel Cotto.

Can't wait for the big fight on Saturday.

No, not the UFC in Montreal, which has at least two of this country's sports cable outfits in pants-wetting mode. They've devoted hours and hours of coverage, much of it even going to undercard fighters.

Would be nice of them to even drop just a line about boxers Bernard Hopkins and Joe Calzaghe, bona fide legends who will be meeting in Las Vegas. They only have about 35 years of craft behind them in the pro game, and some would argue they've never really been beaten in the last 15 years.

I read this week that AMC, the apparent movie channel, is so happy with the acclaim and ratings for its shows Breaking Bad and Mad Men, that several more series are in development.

AMC became available for some Canadians within the past year, along with Turner Classic Movies.

If you can explain to me how allowing AMC but not HBO is at all consistent, I'd love to know, however, many parochial interests here in Canada are using all kinds of convoluted logic at this week's CRTC hearings to prevent HBO from being here in this country in its unvarnished form.