Miguel Cotto’s WBA welterweight title scrap with Antonio Margarito recently in Las Vegas had a bit of everything.

Drama. Heroism. Blood, sweat and tears. You name it. This fight had it.

It was point blank unforgettable. Sadly, the undercard was anything but.

The supporting bouts were more a ‘who’s you’ rather than a ‘who’s who’ of the fight game in 2008 with Bernabe Concepcion against Adam Carrera and Jesus Rojas v Anyetei Laryea contests that even the most devout of boxing anoraks would struggle to get enthused about.

Cotto-Margarito was being hyped as a fight-of-the-year candidate. A titanic tussle between bitter Mexican and Puerto Rican rivals was expected so surely the undercard deserved a little bit more depth?

Apparently not. The only other ‘title’ fight on the MGM Grand bill was an interim WBA light-flyweight tussle between Giovanni Segura and Cesar Canchila.

Despite this, the promoters still had the temerity to have a little moan at the relatively poor attendance (the arena was far from full).

Sadly it wasn’t just a one-off.

In recent years a worrying trend has developed whereby big pay-per-view fights are being sold off the back of a good main event and little else.

Take Floyd Mayweather’s December clash with Ricky Hatton for example, where Jeff Lacy against Peter Manfredo Jnr masqueraded as chief support. Both men had been whipped by Joe Calzaghe and exposed as anything but elite class.

Then there was Mayweather against Oscar De La Hoya, a fight that turned out to be the richest in boxing history. Surely with so many dollars to play with the rest of the card would be smattered with a few A-Listers, right?

Wrong. Rocky Juarez against Jose Hernandez was chief support for ‘The World Awaits’ and as I remember it we as fans did some waiting alright for the main event to get going. Sadly it’s not just a US phenomenon either.

You can understand a promoter’s reasoning to an extent, I suppose. If we are going to sell out anyway why risk a couple of our big names in fights they could lose when we could use them as ticket sellers in their own right down the line?

However, while such an attitude makes perfect business sense it’s hurting the game (though in Frank Warren and Sports Network’s defence his September 6 show for the MEN in Manchester is shaping up to be a cracker).

It’s also one of the main reasons why MMA is gaining in popularity so much. The best are routinely fighting the best and that isn’t limited to main events.

If a fan is having to shell out 50 bones for a PPV bill he has a right to be entertained.

Not so long ago you had the likes of Don King and Bob Arum going toe-to-toe with each other to see who could knock up the best PPV events from first bell to last.

The 1980s and 1990s in particular saw some incredible pay-per-view cards that were world title fight heavy with some great names mixing it with each other.

King in particular set the standard to which PPV boxing cards should be held. Sadly as The Don’s choke-hold grip on the sport in terms of promoting has fallen away in recent years so has the quality of the undercards.

It’s not as if the superstars or up-and-coming fistic prodigies are no longer with us like they were in the 80s or 90s either.

You can make a real argument for current fighters like Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton being as popular as any pugilists, pound for pound, in history while blue-chip prospects such as Amir Khan and Yuriokis Gamboa continue to come through with clockwork regularity.

The great fighters are among us and as Cotto and Margarito showed last weekend if you put them together then sometimes magical things can happen.

But for my money the sport itself will continue to suffer while some promoters are of the attitude that you can fool all of the people all of the time. For history has shown us that this simply isn’t true.