I'm not one of these anti-Texas people. I've been there once, driving from Indiana to California. I didn't enjoy the humid heat, but I found nothing to hate.

But Texas' boxing jurisdiction is loathsome. It is nauseating. It's sleazy, it's vile, it's vulgar. Horrible judging, horrible refereeing, nepotism and an utter disregard for the health of boxers are its hallmarks. Now, the Department of Licencing and Regulation is poised to allow Antonio Margarito to fight. Margarito, a fighter who last year tried to load his gloves with plaster before his welterweight bout against Shane Mosley and ended up suspended throughout the country.

Not Texas, though, not anymore. Margarito's promoter, Bob Arum, says the state has given him indicators Margarito will be relicensed there for the March 13 undercard of Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey. Basically, whatever is too repugnant for everyone else is good enough for Texas. But as of now, it has the upper hand. The state should be getting punished and shunned for its bad behavior, but Jerry Jones has a giant stadium that Arum has a hard-on about and as long as Arum's interested in Texas, Texas will be doing good boxing business. So can Arum be convinced to do the right thing? Nah.

What can you do to a man who isn't motivated by making the most money? He would have made a fortune off Floyd Mayweather-Pacquiao, but will be taking less cash instead, so you can't hit him in his pocketbook by boycotting the fight. What can you do to a man who isn't motivated by love of the sport, or its fans? Arum said from the beginning of his career that he didn't care about boxing, and by walking away from Mayweather-Pacquiao, he showed he didn't care about its fans, either. What can you do to a man who is ruled by his emotions, rather than his intellect? Arum can harbor grudges that last decades, even if it's irrational. What can you do to a man who doesn't care how bad his reputation is? He knows he went from defending Margarito by calling the commissioners who suspended him racist, to talking up the illegitmacy of his win over Miguel Cotto, back to being on Margarito's side again -- and he knows how angry he made so many of us at him along the way.

We are helpless, as boxing fans, to do little more than scream and shout and hope someone like Arum listens, and that Texas' boxing scene suffers as a result. On that upbeat note, let's get to some Quick Jabs!

Quick Jabs

Outside of the big HBO card, your weekend schedule includes few options. In the Philippines Friday, Ring-ranked boxers junior flyweight Brian Viloria and strawweight Donnie Nietes are fighting opponents who appear on paper as though they will soon be lacking in stuffing. And that's about it! Unless you count middleweight John Duddy on the non-televised undercard of the HBO event. Which I do not...

I've been hard on Ring lately for this and that, but the website has put together some high-quality journalism this week on two pressing, headline-grabbing issues in the sport: performance-enhancing drugs and terrible judging. I highly recommend reading all three pieces. A couple minor comments. One is that Gale Van Hoy's judging has been questioned before, despite what he says. It featured prominently in a Micky Ward fight, per the biography of Ward, "Irish Thunder." Another is that second Eric Raskin piece is a little light on tangible solutions -- here are some we discussed at TQBR...

News on promoters/managers time. 1. Junior welterweight Amir Khan has signed with Golden Boy Promotions, which is an interesting move given that the most prominent client of Khan's trainer, Freddie Roach, Pacquiao, is suing them. I'm betting Pacquiao gives him a little extra business in sparring over that one. Still, GBP is one of the two big companies, and the one with the best ties to HBO, and Khan wants to make a splash in the United States, so I guess it makes sense on that level. 2. Boxingtalk reports that Lou DiBella has bought out Warriors Boxing, and candidly, I think that's fantastic. I'd love to see DiBella become a promoter on the level with GBP and Arum, not that this gets him there -- it just gets him closer. He gets some quality fighters (like junior featherweight Celestino Caballero) and some promising prospects (like junior middleweight Joe Greene) out of the deal, assuming he keeps everyone. DiBella's HBO reign wasn't perfect, but as a promoter, I've loved his integrity and willingness to put his fighters in tough. 3. A movie about trainer/manager Lou Duva? Wacky, but interesting...

News on belts time. 1. Pacquiao won't fight at junior welterweight ever again, Roach said, so presumably he'll be dropping his Ring belt. Sigh. Like we needed another vacancy amongst the truest champions. What's so hard about the #1 and #2 contenders in a fighting each other? 2. Zsolt Erdei has dropped the cruiserweight alphabet title belt he just won, and it seems he'll be headed back down to light heavyweight, which means some will want to argue again about whether he has a true claim to the lineal championship in that division. Can we not? I mean, he left the division and dropped his alphabet belt at 175, which to me was as close as you get to renouncing the lineal championship. It seems to me he just changed his mind about cruiserweight after committing to it....

News on trainers' run-ins with the law time. Roach won a lawsuit against a man who accused Roach of beating him up. Roger Mayweather -- well, he ain't been found guilty of beating a woman up, but it's going in the wrong direction for him...

I'm not going to get too preoccupied with negotiations over Mayweather-Shane Mosley, but I do think it interesting that Dana White is moving a UFC event from May 1 to May 8 to avoid running into it. Like with all these scheduling disagreements, everybody always claims they had the date reserved first or whatever, and it usually results in events going head-to-head. This time, White moved his event. And now, everybody will make more money because of it. Is that so hard? I don't think any less of White as a man for making that move. Not everything needs to be some titantic ego battle, you know?...

Featherweights Mikey Garcia and Steven Luevano -- Luevano was inspired by Garcia, actually -- want to be cops after their boxing careers end. (Link via BoxingScene: Be forewarned, given the virus problem they always have.) If they do it, pity the criminal who decides to get physical with those two gents. Or, if you're the kind that doesn't pity criminals no matter what, then -- just be happy, I guess...

Ricky Hatton says he's sick of people talking about how fat he is. And I'm sure Jay Leno is tired of all the chin jokes, too...

That brings us to Round and Round! And unlike last time with the placement of the ScarJo picture, this time the placement of the round-faced Hatton is a deliberate transition.

Round And Round

April 17 is looking like it'll be a double-header between middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik and Sergio Martinez, along with super middleweight Lucian Bute fighting somebody. HBO is deliberately trying to screw Showtime's Super Six 168-pound tournament that night, so, asshole move. Feel free to try and upstage it the next week, but don't make fans pick between two good shows. As for the Super Six, it appears as though Allan Green-Sakio Bika won't be happening in February to determine who replaces Jermain Taylor as Andre Ward's next opponent. Boxingtalk, whose proprietor dabbles in managing/consulting/something fighters, reports that Green is going to just go ahead and replace Taylor. There were rumors that Green might end up an opponent for Bute, so I wonder if Showtime was thinking, "We'll just snap this guy up." And you know, it kind of makes sense. I'm no fan of Green, but Taylor was a DiBella fighter and so is Green, and short of Bute, he's as good a Super Six replacement candidate as any. Paul Williams, the odd man out in the Pavlik-Martinez-Williams trio for the time being, could return April 10, but against whom is the question.

Normally with these Round and Round round-ups, I go in order of big names/top fighters, but there's a fight that I'm so excited about that I think it has to be prominently placed: Yonnhy Perez-Abner Mares is going to be on the undercard of Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez IV on May 22 on Showtime. If you've seen Perez' last two fights, you know he's not scared to mix it up, but he's got plenty of the sweet science to complement that tendency. Mares is more of the same. I honestly think these two bantamweights will upstage the two featherweights in the main event, which is saying something. I'm not kidding: This fight has Fight of the Year written all over it, a bout between a proven, prime fighter and a promising, ultra-talented prospect on the way up who are sure to produce tons of high-level action.

As with every week, you can just draw random junior welterweight names out of a hat and come up with exciting match-ups that are being discussed. For April and May, and the dates are so subject to change I don't find it worth mentioning them now -- although if the fights end up on undercards of certain crappy pay-per-views or high-class pay-per-views, it affects how I perceive said pay-per-views -- here's how things are shaking out: Khan might fight Marquez, Juan Diaz or Paulie Malignaggi. He almost certainly won't be fighting Marcos Maidana next, despite purse bids and other kinds of businessy stuff that's been going on, although nobody seems to agree what it means. My money is on Khan not fighting Maidana next, but maybe fighting him later, which I think would more than suffice; he needs to fight a puncher at some point again, and one more fight of seasoning against the feathery-fisted likes of Diaz or Malignaggi works for me in the interim, because those are legit fighters. Marquez could be fighting Katsidis at lightweight, where he's the champion, or may end up in a rematch with Diaz at junior welter. If Marquez doesn't fight Katsidis, Robert Guerrero might move up from junior lightweight to fight Katsidis. Meanwhile, Kendall Holt finally has an opponent for his alphabet title eliminator in February, the inexplicable Kaiser Mabuza, but the really good news is that Arum is looking at matching up Holt with Lamont Peterson on the June 12 undercard of Miguel Cotto-Yuri Foreman (junior middleweight). Lastly, Victor Ortiz is looking to kick off this year's season of "Fight Night Club" on Fox Sports Net in February against an opponent to be named, then may be back on HBO a couple months later, perhaps against Nate Campbell. The $8 a month I spent to get the DirecTV sports package is proving WELL worth the money, and I was glad to see an article in BoxingScene saying they're already happy with the ratings boxing is getting them over at FSN.

Whew! So what's left? Well, junior middleweight Kassim Ouma is saying he'd like to fight the likes of Alfredo Angulo and Kermit Cintron on HBO, and I'd definitely support that. I know Ouma lost on the scorecards against Vanes Martirosyan over the past weekend, and maybe HBO isn't listening to Ouma right now, but I thought Ouma won, lots of people thought Ouma won and I intend to treat his call-outs like legit call-outs as a result. Incidentally, Raskin noted in one of the links above that "one website" said of Martirosyan-Ouma that it was "Martirosyan's best performance to date." Curious, I plugged the phrase into Google and crazily, I found more than one website that said that -- Fightnews, Sky Sports, some others.

Glen Johnson-Yusaf Mack in a light heavyweight title eliminator lost its home when Mosley-Berto fell through this month, but it looks like it'll be Feb. 5 on ESPN2. Glad to hear we'll get to see a promising fight we wouldn't have before, because Johnson-Mack wasn't going to be televised.

And we always have to finish with the joke fights: Erik Morales' comeback might be against lightweight Jose Alfaro in March, but at 142. Morales is shot; he was no good at lightweight, even before he was shot; he almost certainly wouldn't be good at junior welterweight; and above junior welterweight just sounds silly. I'm really worried Morales is cruising to get hurt here, even if Alfaro's no world-beater.

(Round and Round sourcing: ESPN; BoxingScene; Fanhouse; Boxingtalk)