Mexican’s eye injury ‘not as serious’ as Leonard’s
The fractured eye-socket injury suffered by Antonio Margarito as a result of the battering he received at the hands of Manny Pacquiao is not as bad as the injury suffered by Sugar Ray Leonard in 1982, according to well-known Filipino eye specialist Dr. Arnold Salud.
In an interview with the Inquirer, Salud also said referee Laurence Cole should have stopped the fight because of the obvious damage to Margarito’s right eye and the fact that the injury might worsen.
The Mexican was expected to undergo surgery today to repair a fractured eye socket at the Dallas Methodist Hospital.
Salud, a specialist at the American Eye Center, recalled that Leonard announced his retirement from boxing shortly after he was diagnosed with a detached retina while training for a May 1982 fight with Roger Stafford.
Leonard ignored doctor’s advice, however, and came out of retirement to score a ninth-round TKO of Kevin Howard on May 14, 1984.
Salud said Leonard’s injury was “worse” than Margarito’s “because in the retina detachment, it’s the eye itself that is injured while in orbital fracture it’s the housing that is injured, not the eye.”
When bones surrounding the eye are broken, the condition is called orbital fracture, the surgeon explained.
Salud said that when Cole asked Margarito whether he could still see his fingers “at that particular time, the wall or walls may have been broken already.”
“When you can see the fingers of the referee, it doesn’t mean the boxer is OK,” he said. “It’s not only injuring the eye, you can also injure the socket or orbit of the eye.”
He said there are four walls that surround the eyeball and, as in Margarito’s case, “its like pushing the eyeball into the skull.”
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