Margarito-Mosley is a hit show

In a time of national gloom and doom, boxing is having one of its happier moments.

Tonight’s Antonio Margarito-Shane Mosley fight at Staples Center is just the centerpiece, the reason to show up for dinner. The good stuff is the appetizers and dessert.

Margarito is the World Boxing Assn. welterweight champion, which means nothing except to the people who collect sanctioning fees at the WBA. Some flunkie will follow Margarito around the ring before the fight, holding his WBA belt high. But other than that, and the announcement of the winner as “still” or “the new” WBA champion, sanctions and organizations will have no part in this.

It’s all about matchup and box-office appeal, and the first thing that has made for great joy for the boxing gods, a.k.a. promoters Bob Arum and Richard Schaefer, is that this Staples fight has become a hit show. As of Thursday afternoon, all seats, including the 5,500 around the top rung that are so far away the fighters will look like ants, are sold.

That means the attendance for a boxing match that (a) does not involve Oscar De La Hoya (b) is not a heavyweight match and (c) has no slot machines or blackjack tables adding to the allure, will draw 20,000 people.

That’s no small thing these days for the people who run Staples. As one executive of the Staples operation noted recently, there are now long stretches between rock concerts and other shows that used to be a staple of Staples, because none of the promoters want to charge lower ticket prices or play to empty seats.

And so, at a place where it used to be an afterthought or an add-on if the schedule permitted, boxing is bringing a welcome ringing of cash registers to Staples. With talk of more to come.

Margarito-Mosley is a nice fight, but it’s not Ali-Frazier, as the rush for tickets would indicate.

Margarito is the current heir apparent to a perceived need of Mexican boxing fans to have a new Julio Cesar Chavez. He was a warrior and so is Margarito, who generally wins fights with destruction, rather than deception or defense. He is 30 years old, was born in Torrance but has lived most of his life in Tijuana, and speaks mostly Spanish in public. Margarito seemed to take over the Mexican Warrior Crown with his recent defeat of Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico, who was thought to be indestructible. That made Margarito’s record 37-5, with all but 10 of the victories knockouts.

Mosley is 37, has a record of 45-5, with 38 knockouts, and has won four of those sanctioning group titles along the way. He, too, is a nice fighter who, in his prime, had the hand and foot speed, plus the punch, to mess with Margarito. The question is whether Mosley is still in his prime.

Mosley, who learned his trade under his father, Jack, in Pomona, hit the bright lights with two victories over De La Hoya, and the second one now is the focus of additional buzz, which boxing loves.

After Mosley beat De La Hoya in 2003, he was called to testify before a grand jury in the ongoing BALCO drug scandal that had already swirled around various track stars such as Marion Jones and baseball’s Barry Bonds. Mosley’s testimony was released recently, and contrary to his sincere-sounding statements in public that he had gone to BALCO but didn’t know what he had taken, the transcripts indicate he knew.

Interestingly, that means that, unlike several other sports stars, Mosley apparently told the truth when it counted most, to the grand jury, and has only strayed from that to the public. Unlike others, he likely faces no further legal problems nor jail time. But he seems unable or unwilling -- assuming the grand jury transcripts are as straightforward as they seem -- to fess up to the fans.

Thursday, after a news conference, Mosley was asked how sick he was of all the drug talk and how he might get rid of that. Mosley mumbled something, then turned to his right, where his lawyer, Judd Burstein, waved the question away.

It won’t go away, of course. HBO, which will carry the fight live, starting at 7 p.m., has already made it clear that its announcers will not be avoiding the Mosley drug question, as they did during September’s Mosley-Ricardo Mayorga telecast.

“We have a responsibility, journalistically, to the viewer,” said Ross Greenburg, head of HBO sports, as quoted by the New York Daily News.

If that wasn’t enough for the Sport of Chaos, there was the weeklong, on-again off-again Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton fight.

It was perfect because boxing, once it gets to the week of the big fight it has been selling, quickly turns to the next big one. Both sides in that one squabbled about money and respect and the greed of the other guy. Arum and Schaefer, promoters for Pacquiao and Hatton, respectively, grumbled and harrumphed. All of it made its way into papers and onto websites.

Golly. It turns out the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, originally scheduled for May 2 in Las Vegas before all the fussing and fighting, will be May 2 in Las Vegas.

Then there was Friday’s weigh-in, featuring more noise and activity, leading nowhere. Margarito weighed 145.5 pounds. Mosley hit the scales first at 147.2, two-tenths too high to allow this to be a title fight. Five minutes later, he returned, hit 147 on the nose and all was well again. There’s a Jenny Craig endorsement there somewhere.

This morning, at a hotel near Staples, boxing will have a news conference to further hype the Feb. 7 match at the Honda Center in Anaheim between Jorge Arce and Vic Darchinyan. They are super-flyweights whose mouths are larger than their bodies and who have already hurled various verbal bombs at each other. More will come.

For boxing, this is heaven.

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bill.dwyre@latimes.com.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Tale of the tape

ANTONIO MARGARITO

(37-5, 27 KOs)

vs.

SHANE MOSLEY

(45-5, 38 KOs)

*--* Margarito Mosley 30 AGE 37 Torrance BIRTHPLACE Lynwood Tijuana HOMETOWN Pomona 30 AGE 37 145 1/2 WEIGHT 147 5-11 HEIGHT 5-10 73” REACH 74” 16” NECK 16 1/2 “ 41” CHEST 39” 43” CHEST (EXPANDED) 42” 16” BICEPS 14” 12” FOREARMS 11 1/2 “ 7” WRIST 6 1/4 “ 12” FIST 11 1/2 “ 32” WAIST 31” 23” THIGH 22” 13 1/2 “ CALF 13 1/4 “ *--*