Breaking down the fallout for Saturday’s Cotto-Pavlik doubleheader

Pressure, pressure, pressure. There is plenty to go around Saturday in Bob Arum’s pay-per-view double header, which starts in New York with Miguel Cotto against a Brit named Michael Jennings and ends at the front lines of the economic crisis in Youngstown, Ohio, with Kelly Pavlik against Marco Antonio Rubio.

A perfect storm is brewing for at least one upset. But who? Arum? Sure, but the Top Rank promoter is always upset.

Then again, cross-currents of controversy during the last few weeks have shoved the ever-combative Arum into a corner, a dilemma brought on by Antonio Margarito’s loss of his California license for at least year because of suspicious hand wraps that apparently are still under investigation in some crime lab. Writers for CSI and Law & Order must already be hard at work on scripts.

There has been at last as much attention on hints of a reported rift between Arum and Cotto, who lost to Margarito in his last outing and isn’t happy at Arum’s over-the-top defense of the Mexican welterweight. In defending one client – Margarito, Arum has offended another — Cotto.

There would be no problem, none at all, if not for an obvious conflict of interest – one promoter for two fighters in the same bout. Interests in boxing collide all the time, of course. This time and not for the first time, it is Arum who is caught in the middle.

Arum’s loyalty to a client is one element. He really doesn’t have any choice. But there’s more to it than that. Margarito is still popular in Mexico. Only a dumb businessman would do anything to offend his biggest and most loyal audience, which in boxing means allegiance to Mexico. In his angry defense of Margariito, Arum is protecting his gate.

The guess here is that Cotto will emerge as a benefactor from all that is swirling around Saturday night’s tale of two cities and two fighters. Cotto already is a sympathetic figure for his Puerto Rican fans, who know all about the bloody ring rivalry with Mexico. They just don’t believe Margarito’s claim of innocence. They are thinking what Cotto has already expressed: If Margarito didn’t know there was something more than just gauze in those wraps in his July upset of Cotto and before his loss last month to Sugar Shane Mosley, then exactly whose hands were in those loaded gloves?

Certainly, Cotto’s plate is loaded up with plenty of motivation to prove that his lone loss was more than just a bad night. Then, there is a potential showdown with Manny Pacquiao, another Arum client whom the Top Rank promoter mentioned as a Cotto possibility in a conference call a couple of weeks ago.

A rematch of Cotto’s victory over Mosley is mentioned more frequently. For now, however, the real biggie looks like Cotto-Pacquiao if the Filpino beats Ricky Hatton in May. It would be harder to put together Pacquiao-Cotto if there were a Cotto-Arum split. The guess is that Cotto will make his point and move a little closer to a chance at a pound-for-pound claim that one day might look as if it were simply delayed by a rocky encounter.

All of this inevitably leads out of New York and west to Ohio, straight into the heart of the pressure cooker, which is occupied by Pavlik. It’s hard to know what to make of him after his loss to Bernard Hopkins in October. It is impossible to know whether Pavlik was slowed by a catch weight (170) heavier than his usual 160 pounds, or by hype, or just a bad night.

Unlike Cotto, Pavlik has nobody else and/or nothing else to blame. There is only himself, which means there is vacuum and plenty of room for self-doubt. The burden of proof, all of it, rests heavily on him. So, too, do the collective expectations of a northeastern Ohio city that has come to define tough times.

In defense of his middleweight titles, Pavlik, the WBC and WBO champion, will fight Rubio at a Youngstown arena named the Chevrolet Centre. If dire reports about General Motors are accurate, the Centre will be around longer than the Chevy. Enormous hope has been placed in Pavlik by a community that doesn’t have much else to cheer. That has the potential to be a huge, perhaps impossible distraction, although Pavlik talks as though he welcomes it.

“It’s really important to bounce back, especially in my hometown,’’ Pavlik says. “Coming off that loss makes it really important for us to go out there and prove critics wrong.

“I’m excited with the opportunity and for the fans. I think it’s great, especially with everything going on right now. …They don’t have to travel, stay in hotel rooms. I think it’s just a nice little payback for the fans. They can come watch the fight and then get a good night’s sleep in their own bed.

“And I think it’s good for the city of Youngstown. People are going to want to go out, hang out, eat and enjoy a night in their hometown.’’

But home might be an even tougher place than already is if Pavlik doesn’t deliver a victory that eluded him the last time and has eluded his city for too long.