Here is a photo of Herol Graham, and that young lad to his left would later grow up to be the great Prince Naseem Hamed, one of the greatest featherweights in history. Like I said earlier, Naseem Hamed idolized Herol Graham and learned a lot from him.
Herol Graham and Mike "the bodysnatcher" McCallum before their fight. Herol Graham held his own against McCallum, but McCallum got the decision. Mike McCallum is another one of my all-time favorites, he was nicknamed "the bodysnatcher" because he was a vicious body puncher, more on him later.
"Sugar" Shane Mosley. He was one of the best I've ever seen in his prime, he was like a lightweight version of Mike Tyson, brutal knockout power, threw vicious punches in combinations, had very fast hands, explosive as hell, could strike as quick as a snake. He would be standing there one minute, all over you like a cheap suit the next, he could put a guy to sleep out of nowhere. He was so much fun to watch at his best, highly combustible.
Shane Mosley terrorized the lightweight division during his time, much the same way Roberto Duran did, although I wouldn't quite put him on Duran's level. Mosley was a boxing fans dream fighter, action packed, explosive, with speed and power. I would love to see Shane Mosley vs Roberto Duran, one of my dream lightweight fights.
Teofilo Stevenson, oh boy, where to begin with him. He was a heavyweight, he won three straight Olympic Gold medals for Cuba in the heavyweight division. He was a behemoth of a man, 6'5", just a monster. Getting in the ring with him must have been like challenging Goliath to a fight. Not only this, but he is one of the greatest boxers in the history of the sport, he won over 300 fights and was unbeaten for 11 years. The only thing is, he was from communist Cuba, which during his time was under the rule of Fidel Castro. That's where the story takes a dark turn, Teofilo Stevenson was so great and so dominant that everyone wanted him to fight Muhammad Ali, it's one of the biggest "what ifs" in the history of the sport. In fact, Teofilo Stevenson was offered $5 million to turn professional and fight Ali, but Stevenson was a national hero in Cuba, and he turned it down. He didn't want to disappoint Castro and his regime. So Teofilo Stevenson never went pro, and he just sort of faded from the boxing scene, and that was that. But there can be no doubt, he was one of the greatest heavyweights in the history of the sport, the man was just dominant, there's no other way to describe it. He won Gold in Munich in 1972, he won Gold in Montreal in 1976, and he won Gold in Moscow in 1980. He was unbeaten in the Olympics for 11 years until he finally lost. His story is frustrating for boxing fans because we always wonder, how he would have fared against the pros here in the states, in particular Muhammad Ali, Stevenson was an all-time great, he had knockout power, great movement for a big guy, and could box like crazy, watching him on film is like watching a bunch of lambs being led to slaughter. Anyway, he just kind of faded from the boxing scene after a while and spent the rest of his life in communist Cuba. He was always a national hero in Cuba, but he ended up becoming a poor alcoholic recluse, and died that way. In 2011, a journalist from the United States went to try to interview him, Stevenson didn't like being interviewed by journalists, and hated being on film or photographed, but this journalist was determined.
Brin-Jonathan Butler | June 10, 2014
HÉROES FOR SALE
TEÓFILO STEVENSON, YASIEL PUIG AND THE AGONY OF THE CUBAN ATHLETE
"What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?"
That was how Stevenson, the second most famous Cuban after you-know-who, replied to offers to abandon his island and become a professional to fight Muhammad Ali. At the time, Stevenson was perhaps the only man on the planet who was not only Ali's equal in the ring, but could surpass him in what the poet Federico Garcia Lorca referred to as duende, that ephemeral quality that separates the immortals from the rest of us, that causes women to cry and men to swoon. Stevenson was someone authentic, a man whose pride and principle bowed to no one.
By now Stevenson was a full-blown alcoholic without enough money to replace a flat tire for his car.
"Cuba's best athletes don't stay there because of love of country," the Miami-based journalist Dan Le Batard wrote in the recent "Cuba Issue" of ESPN The Magazine to which I also contributed. "If the government were to collapse, if the rules were to change, those athletes would end up lapping onto our shores like so many waves, families in tow." Le Batard, born in New Jersey to Cuban parents, then zeroed in on Stevenson's famous words and explained, "This is one of the propaganda machine's greatest quotes, but it is also the largest kind of lie, the one that has to be told when the truth is not allowed. First of all, Stevenson didn't have any understanding of what those dollars meant."
So who does understand? A man with nothing or a man with everything? Stevenson seemed to encompass both extremes. In May of 2011, when I sat down with Teófilo Stevenson in his modest home in the comfortable Havana neighborhood of Nautico, his precarious physical state gave every indication, contrary to Le Batard's estimation, that Fidel's "favorite athlete" bore all the scars of turning down the life he might have lived away from his beloved island. By now Stevenson was a full-blown alcoholic without enough money to replace a flat tire for his car. Yet while his life remained an open wound, I saw no evidence of regret or deceit as he offered the reasons behind an impossible decision. On the other side of the 90 miles that separate Cuba from the United States, it wasn't as if Mike Tyson, having earned nearly half a billion dollars in the ring, had been less damaged.
When Stevenson agreed to talk about all the millions he turned down, he asked me for money, about $100. I suppose you could choose one of those sums as a symbol to define the man and neatly illuminate who he was and what he stood for. Then again, if you just chose one, I'm more inclined to think your choice illuminates a lot more about who you are.
Last month, two years after Stevenson's death, I arranged to meet with his daughter, Helmys, on the tiny Mexican island of Isla Mujeres, just off the Cancun coast where she's lived and worked for over half of her 30 years. Isla Mujeres had just been splashed all over the news, revealed as the place where in 2012 Yasiel Puig, the latest Cuban defector superstar athlete, and now an outfielder for the Dodgers, had been held hostage at machete-point in a dingy hotel room until a ransom for his freedom was paid.
Late one warm night, I picked Helmys up at the island's ferry terminal. She was easy to spot in the crowd, as striking in her own way as her father. Aside from her beauty, even without her heels she was a head taller than most of the men around her. I looked at her a few moments before she saw me and waved a hand high above her head like Venus Williams in mid-serve. She was another of these girls Cuba has in abundance, women who seem as if they entered the world peeled off a cigar box, all curves and color.
With some clues from Katz, I spent a couple weeks sniffing around Isla Mujeres. I was looking for the motel where Puig was held after he'd swum ashore in darkness against riptides and blindly negotiated razor sharp coral after being dumped from a smuggler's boat.
She then pointed out the beach where the most recent smuggler's boat arrived and where three people drowned before reaching shore. A handful of refugees were arrested, but the rest scattered and disappeared on the island. A long-abandoned, half-built timeshare condominium complex stood watch over the desolate shore. A flapping red flag warned tourists not to enter the water due to deadly currents. A mile away, a dozen cigarette boats were docked next to the heavily guarded Mexican naval base. Soldiers patrolled the nearby tourist beaches armed with M-16s as locals sauntered around the sand peddling jewelry.
Nowhere I've ever been can break your heart and leave it bleeding like Havana.
As far as cities go, Havana is a festering treasure chest, a primary color. Isla Mujeres' paint kit is fresher, but still, somehow, not as bright. There are a lot of cities in this world that can break your balls, but nowhere I've ever been can break your heart and leave it bleeding like Havana. When you leave the scab comes off and never heals. And after you first arrive, you're told by many that everyone deserves to have Havana as a ciudad natal, a hometown. This is an ugly condition I'll confess very uneasily: I'm homesick for a place I wasn't born to.
Forget the question of whether or not he could have beaten Ali. Stevenson could have been Ali.
I have a dirty little habit of distilling every city I've ever visited into the historical person I'd have most wanted to meet and share a cigarette with. From the first moment I stepped foot in Havana my dream was to speak with Teófilo Stevenson, Cuba's twisted answer to Vincent van Gogh. If van Gogh, in part, captured the world's imagination by not being able to sell masterpieces, Stevenson did so by turning down every offer. The world knew he was good, but they weren't sure how good. Shortly after Stevenson's death, George Foreman told me Stevenson was far and away the best heavyweight fighter of his era. He was sure that if Stevenson had left Cuba and become a professional he could have been the dominant heavyweight of his time. And of course, Stevenson had that shot at Muhammad Ali, not just to defect, but to conquer. But it was a lot more than that, too. Forget the question of whether or not he could have beaten Ali. Stevenson could have been Ali. How much was that worth? What was the cost of saying no to that? Could there be a principled position to justify such a refusal? The answer depends on who you ask.
I tried for years to ask that of Stevenson, but when I finally heard his voice over the phone agree to sit down on camera, I assumed my days in Cuba were numbered. I knew that showing the condition Stevenson was in to the world would go over on the island about as well as releasing a sex tape of Michelle Obama in the States. If, at his height, Stevenson was an emblematic hero of everything that succeeded for the revolution, his deterioration remained just as potent for what had failed.
I wasn't happy about that. Exploring Castro's pawns in Cuba and exposing anything negative also makes you a pawn to all his enemies 90 miles away. Both sides don't have much of a track record for nuance of opinion.
Of course, there was nothing unique about the circumstances of Puig's story any more than there was with Stevenson's. "Se fue" (he left) and "se quedo" (he stayed) are decisions that have circumscribed and defined the identity of every Cuban family and have been around since Fidel Castro and the revolution split in half nearly every family on the island. This is Cuba's answer to "Sophie's Choice."
Isla Mujeres, only four miles long, has become an even more desirable destination for smugglers than the Cancun mainland three miles away. From Isla Mujeres' seawall Malecon to Havana's is 308 miles, to the western edge of Cuba, only 96 — about the same distance from Cuba to Miami. Some vessels, I was told, took as long as 18 days to make the journey. On the way, boats capsize, people drown, children starve and dehydrate — people are sometimes tossed into the water if the boats are given chase. I've reviewed grainy U.S. Coast Guard footage of some of these human atrocities and it looks like something from the foul corners of Goya's imagination. Many believe that the ocean separating Cuba from the United States represents the largest graveyard on earth. One of the first jokes I heard upon visiting Cuba asked, "What is the primary source of food for sharks in the Florida Straits?" The answer? Cubanos. Ja, ja,
I interviewed Teófilo Stevenson in his home in May of 2011, the same week Osama bin Laden, the CIA's "most dangerous man in the world," was taken out. On the way over to Stevenson's house I drove past a dozen billboards of Che Guevara, Cuba's most revered revolutionary hero. Today, most Americans know him from a popular tourist T-shirt, even worn by one New Yorker I saw celebrating Bin Laden's death by lighting a Cohiba cigar. But Che was also executed by CIA order back when he was listed as the "most dangerous man in the world." I wondered if kitsch could do to Bin Laden one day what it did to Che's legacy.
I'd already taken one too many chances interviewing famous boxers under surveillance by the government. You never know with Cuba whether you've arrived at the wrong place at the right time, the right place at the wrong time, or — the most sinister of all — simply the last time. Cars full of strangers would pass by gleefully pointing up at security cameras. If the police were coming, they were coming. I called Stevenson again from a pay phone and he reluctantly agreed to meet.
OK then, fuck it. One way or another, I would never have another chance. If any place appreciated a pair of balls this was supposed to be the town. Hold on tightly, let go lightly. I stopped a gypsy cab and offered him a day's fare for a round trip to take me and my translator across town to Stevenson's home in Nautico, near the Marina Hemingway.
The translator told me that the best chance we had to coax Stevenson into talking on camera was to bring him some suitably "respectful" vodka as a present. Stevenson was known to trick a lot of journalists into throwing him a party for everyone he could find on the street and then, when the time came to film curtly call the evening to a close. My friend Bobby Cassidy, a writer in New York, had been duped in the same manner.
When we arrived in Nautico, we grabbed a bottle from a kiosk and walked the rest of the way to Stevenson's house. The neighborhood was green and lush, far more cheerful than Felix Savón's (Cuba's answer to Mike Tyson, a boxer who turned down $20 million for a crack at Tyson's title), but reports of Fidel giving Stevenson a "mansion" were nothing more than propaganda. What passes for a luxurious neighborhood in Cuba is, by American standards, sad and drab and nondescript. Fresh coats of paint and old Russian cars — Ladas locked behind fenced-in driveways — are the only signs of relative affluence. Most Cubans elsewhere, of course, have no money for cars, or paint.
My translator was very quiet the closer we got to Stevenson's home. It was clear that he was having second thoughts about being involved with this. He'd spent time with Stevenson before, translating for diplomats who wanted to meet him. He had not enjoyed the experience.
"How bad is he?" I asked him.
"Have you ever spoken to him on the phone when he isn't drunk?"
"I don't think so," I said.
"Exactly," he shook his head.
"He needs the money. So do I. So does everybody in this fucking country."
In conversation, he often didn't know what day or month it was. I was never sure if he was joking. He'd switch from English to Spanish to Russian. If Ali was locked in his body as the cost for his career, what was the price Stevenson paid locked in the vice of this body politic?
"I think it's fairly obvious how bad he is, isn't it?" my translator lamented. "He's not meeting you for the pleasure of speaking with a foreign journalist. He needs the money. So do I. So does everybody in this fucking country. This man is a great hero of mine and to many around the world and having him reduced to this makes me feel ashamed."
"Do you even think he'll talk with us?" I asked.
"I doubt on camera. He's not well. There's his car up ahead. There." He pointed to a rusting, green, early-1990s Toyota behind a fence. "That's his. He turned down $5 million and he drives that. Do you think I'm proud of my country for that? That's the house of Teó. By Cuban standards it's nice, but in Miami he would have lived in a palace. You want to know how hard things have gotten? He doesn't even have enough money to put tires on that car."
In 1987, Stevenson had been involved in what many assumed was an alcohol-related car accident that took a motorcyclist's life. The crime, if indeed it was one, was swept under the rug to preserve Stevenson's iconic status. He was never charged or convicted of any wrongdoing, and although he slowly receded from public view, symbolically he remained a lodestar for Cuba's moral compass. Many Cubans still set their moral watches to Stevenson's clock, and even those opposed to his socialist principles admire the man's courage and conviction.
I wasn't looking forward to undermining that. Galileo wasn't put in prison because he was wrong about anything he discovered looking through his telescope; rather, he was incarcerated simply because he saw what others didn't wish to see.
When we arrived at Stevenson's driveway we could see through the padlocked fence that his front door was open. My translator hollered out and a few tense moments later Stevenson, shirtless and in blue track pants, a cigarette dangling from his lips, wound his stiff 6'5 frame into the entry way with care, bracing himself against the door jamb. I wasn't sure if the fragility in Stevenson's movements owed more to his boxing career or the booze. Nonetheless, he'd recently celebrated his 59th birthday and still looked lean and handsome.
Stevenson approached us, holding out the key to his gate while my translator turned to me with a look of dread.
Teófilo Stevenson won his first Olympic gold medal in 1972 and his last world amateur championship in 1986. He won 302 fights and once went 11 years without a single loss. The offer to fight Muhammad Ali came after Stevenson won his second Olympic gold medal in Montreal in 1976. $5 million were on the table when Stevenson counter-punched at capitalism and asked, "What is $1 million compared to the love of eight million Cubans?"
Ali was a man adept at finding weakness in his opponents and cruelly exploiting it to his own advantage, yet he never saw weakness in Stevenson, not even in his refusal to turn professional and face him in the ring. He admired a man standing up for what he believed in, as Ali had done, refusing to compromise his beliefs to fight in Vietnam. In 1996 and 1998, Ali donated a total of $1.7 million worth of medical aid to Cuba as a way of opposing the economic embargo against the island nation, which had contributed so much to the brutal economic crisis of the previous decade. Stevenson greeted Ali at Havana's international airport and they were inseparable during both of Ali's visits, equals.
Stevenson pried open his lock and pulled back the gate until we had entered and then proceeded to lock us in. There were rumors that he kept a pistol Fidel had given him personally for protection. He offered a warm handshake and smiled, yet his eyes were bloodshot and turned sad the moment he noticed my camera.
"Please come inside," he said in English.
"You like speaking English?" I asked.
"As long as he doesn't start the Russian ..." My translator smiled in Stevenson's direction.
Once we got inside his home — surrounded by photographs, mementos and trophies — Stevenson pointed to a chair for me to sit in while he sat across from me, the street visible to him out the open front door. I quickly realized why this was: Every last person who walked by, spotting Stevenson, sang his name in joy, raising a hand of praise, and it lifted his spirits. I handed the bottle of vodka to Stevenson and he tilted his head in thanks, asking the translator if he could go back into the kitchen and bring out some cups and orange juice for us.
Even though at the time I had no idea that this was going to be the last interview of Stevenson's life before his sudden death a year later in June 2012, I knew this wasn't going to be easy. Suddenly it got considerably worse.
I turned and began attaching my camera to a small tripod. I was in the process of stretching out and unfolding it just as Stevenson lit another cigarette, turned to our translator, and said in Spanish:
"Tell him he has to pay, or there is no interview. Make him come up with something."
"How much do we ask for?" my translator asked Stevenson.
"You tell me," Stevenson grunted. "You have experience in this. Give him a number."
"I say we ask for 80 or a hundred. I'm broke."
"OK." Stevenson shrugged. "But I'm worse off than you. If I say there is no interview—"
Just then he noticed the camera pointed in his direction. "Don't film me now. No camera! Put the camera away."
I swung the camera away.
Stevenson was in an impossible situation. He not only rejected America's millions, but he also had to pretend there was no consequence. Stevenson had to be just as defiant in his choice as Puig was pretending he'd reached salvation entering American life with no lingering pain. Zero tolerance for dissent on this point cuts both ways. The emotional truth remains hidden.
He not only rejected America's millions, but he also had to pretend there was no consequence.
"Is it off?" Stevenson growled.
I turned it off.
The translator spread out three cups before Stevenson and placed a large bottle of orange juice next to the vodka.
"We can talk, but I don't want to be filmed."
"If you grant me an interview I have to film." I said. "That's why I'm here."
"For $100 you can film the pictures on my wall and have the audio of our interview."
"I'm sorry," I laughed. "On the phone I asked for a filmed interview. That's why I came here. That's my work."
Stevenson put out his cigarette on the floor and looked for another in an empty pack. I offered him one of mine.
"What is this?"
"American Spirit," I said.
"You want Teófilo Stevenson to smoke American Spirit?" He spat out the words. "Why did I ever let you in my house?"
With that, Stevenson went about preparing three drinks in the large paper cups. He filled all three cups to the brim, but two had nine parts orange juice to one part vodka, while the last had nine parts vodka to just a token splash of orange juice. Half the bottle of vodka was already gone.
"OK." Stevenson laughed. "How long you want for our interview?"
"An hour?" I said.
Stevenson nodded thoughtfully and reached down for the suicide screwdriver and hoisted it up toward me.
"Fuck that shit." I waved it off. "I don't even drink." I knew the drill. I had seen my own father try to drink himself to death, just as Stevenson was doing now.
"My friend" — Stevenson snickered — "my deal is this. If you pay $130, you can have an hour with me on camera and film my trophy walls and pictures with Fidel and Ali."
"Done." I reached over to my camera.
"Annnnnnnd," Stevenson added, "The time starts now but you can only begin filming once you finish this drink. These are my terms."
"Those are your terms?"
"Yes." Stevenson smiled coyly. "Do you accept my terms?"
"Deal."
I took the cup of vodka, chugged it in five or six excruciating gulps, struggled not to vomit in Stevenson's living room for the next few moments, and once it had finally settled in my stomach, I reached over to turn the camera on to catch Stevenson's reaction.
"Nooooo!"
"Deal's a deal, campeon."
The translator shook his head. "You're both insane. What am I doing here?"
"OK, one minute," Stevenson pleaded. "One minute." He staggered to his feet and wobbled his way into the dining room and found a shirt and cap after tossing aside some dominos on his dinner table. He returned in a Che Guevara T-shirt and gray cap as armor and stared at me like an old lion.
I started filming. "Are you happy with your life in Cuba?" I asked him, my voice shaking. "Are you happy with the life you've had?"
"Happy? I'm happy. I'm very happy."
"No regrets?"
"No."
"Why is that so hard for people to believe?"
"There are people who become immoral. I would never do that. I endure until the end."
"I've just come from Ireland, where (Cuban boxer) Guillermo Rigondeaux had his last fight. He told me you defended him after he tried to defect."
"The Cuban system helped him. Where he grew up, in Santiago de Cuba? They did not have the conditions that the revolution has created today. He should have respected that."
"Félix Savón told me he felt Rigondeaux betrayed the Cuban people," I said.
"I rejected all that money. Because they wanted me to stay out there in the United States like Rigondeaux and the rest of them. Rigondeaux decided to leave. He wasn't allowed to box anymore in Cuba. He betrayed the Cuban people. And ... he left."
"What does this decision feel like to stay or to leave?" I asked Stevenson. "Is it a decision from the mind or the heart?"
"There are decisions that emerge from your heart and your soul and those decisions can't be betrayed. Now please stop the cameras for a moment. I don't want the children to see the champ smoking, please. It's a bad example."
Helmys wore a long a white dress with her curly hair hanging over her shoulders. While she was built long and lithe like an Olympic swimmer, her arms were as large and sculpted as any middleweight boxer I'd ever seen.
"You lift trucks for a living in Cancun or what?" I asked her.
"I do no exercise," she blushed. "I'm fortunate with good genetics."
"You know, women box in the Olympics now."
"I heard."
"Maybe to settle the argument between your dad and Muhammad Ali I could promote a fight between you and one of Ali's daughters."
"Laila Ali was a world champion!"
"So was her dad when Teófilo got all those offers to fight him."
"I'll consider it."
Just as Ali and Stevenson bore an uncanny physical resemblance, Helmys could have easily passed as one of Ali's daughters. But I wondered how different her life would have been if she had enjoyed the benefits Ali's children enjoyed from his fame and fortune. Teófilo Stevenson was a national hero, but he could never offer his two children the comforts and security of the millions Ali would leave behind. Yet I saw no sign of this fact burdening this lovely girl in any way.
After I warned Helmys of the distance to where I had in mind for us to have dinner, she exchanged her heels for flip-flops.
I took her to the same hotel where Yasiel Puig was held captive under threat of having his arm chopped off by a machete until the ransom was paid. It was the only hotel that fit all the basic clues Katz had provided me: U-shaped, with a pool, looking out over the water at the huge Mexican flag on Cancun, and a drunken stumble away from that strip club. Katz had tried for weeks to identify it on Google images, but failed. Since Puig had been held there, the hotel had undergone a massive renovation. I wonder where the money came from to finance that? My aunt was certain the previous incarnation of the hotel was the dive Katz wrote about in his piece.
We walked in the darkness along the shoulder of the road, a New York avenue worth of land dividing two seas. Helmys wasn't wearing perfume, but the scent wafting off her hair, detonated by moonlight or something, was remarkably distracting.
"How did you leave Cuba?" I asked her.
"I studied international tourism in Mexico. I applied for a visa to stay and work in Mexico. I visit my home in Cuba as often as I can."
"Where did you grow up in Havana?" I asked.
"The house you visited, where my father eventually moved to, was in Nautico. We had the only swimming pool in that neighborhood, but he wouldn't use it for swimming. He liked turtles and ducks and let them use it. But before that home Fidel gave us a house near the Plaza de la Revolución, where he spoke to the Cuban people. Actually, our house was next door to Che Guevara's widow. Che's children were all my friends growing up."
"And was Fidel close with your father?"
"Very close," she slapped my arm for emphasis, as only the daughter of a three-time Olympic Champion might. "After I was born my father introduced me to Fidel and apparently I pulled his beard very hard while he craddled me in his arms."
"So you knew him while you grew up?"
"Of course. But I was ... not terrified of him. I could not speak to him ever. It was Fidel! But always I would ask my father if we were somewhere with Fidel in attendance. ‘Please, can I speak to him?' And my father would ask Fidel to come over and he always would and I had no power of speech. It annoyed my father. But I just could never speak to him."
"Do you ever think about the kind of life you could have had if your father had taken all that money to leave?"
"Money is very nice," she smiled, carressing the shoulder she'd slapped before. "But I wasn't raised that way. I had a beautiful life in Cuba and I'm very happy with my life now."
"You don't think your father ever regretted his decision?"
"He had a beautiful life and gave me a beautiful life also. He was exactly who he wanted to be."
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Stevenson poses for a portrait in 2006. (Getty Images)
"No. Was it an easy decision? No. Not for anyone. My father lived the life he always wanted to live on his terms. Maybe he lived it too much and it cost him an old age. But he had a beautiful life and gave me a beautiful life also. He was exactly who he wanted to be."
Helmys and I passed by the Casablanca, the dingy strip club Katz had mentioned, cigarette butts and bottlecaps studded into their dirty driveway. We could hear Britney Spears singing inside, but no light was visible. The club was hidden from the little road by a hedge, a bit like a double-chin hidden by a beard.
"Do you know about Yasiel Puig?" I asked her. "The baseball player who has become so famous in Los Angeles."
"Sure. Many Cubans come to this island or Cancun every year. Some, like him, are athletes who come for all that money waiting for them in the United States."
"You don't feel strongly one way or the other about his choice?"
"He has to live with his choice and whether it was right for him. I judge no one. It's none of my business."
"What about when people judge your father's choice? What about the people who don't believe anyone could do what he did?"
She shrugged. "Just because someone does not agree with him or his reasons does not mean they have to accuse him of being a liar."
I only had the chance to meet Helmys' father once and I was sorry from the first minute that our exchange wounded a great man's pride, that for many it would reduce him. It took about the same amount of time with his daughter to realize he must have been as proud of his legacy, raising her, as he was of anything he accomplished inside or outside of a ring on behalf of the revolution.
"I brought some photos to show you of my father that I carry on my phone. I thought you would appreciate them. Some photos of my father and Fidel. My father and me. Many have never been published. Would you like to see them?"
She stood next to me, her hair in my face, and warmly flipped through the photos of her father's life. While there were no boxing photos in her collection, everything she showed me illumintated all things I'd imagine he fought for. From his honeymoon to intimate moments with his family, to being introduced to Nelson Mandela, to doing the wave with Fidel at the Pan Am Games — all of it was bigger than life and handled with a coy smirk worthy of any iconic Hollywood movie star.
"Jesus, your dad was a handsome guy," I said.
As she stared at her father's face on the screen she corrected me, "He wasn't handsome. My father was beautiful."
Two years before, I had watched Helmys at her father's funeral as nearly a thousand Cubans in attendance collectively broke down in tears to mourn his loss. I watched her comfort her brother as Stevenson's coffin was lowered into the ground and every face in view grieved a beloved hero. I included footage of this event in my film as a means of contrasting how the prospective funerals of defector Cuban boxing champions might look in America, so far removed from friends and family back home, by comparison.
I wasn't looking to villify or judge either decision, what I wanted put on trial had always been the insiduous choice itself, something Puig and Stevenson and so many others know so well.
Trying to understand Stevenson's life and death, I asked my father to watch my interview with him. It was a tense hour, he saw a bit of himself in Stevenson, as did I.
When the film ended, my father referred me to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1905, Rilke was working as a secretary to the sculptor Rodin and confessed he was no longer writing. The artist sent him to the zoo and told him to look at an animal until he saw it. Rilke imagined the view from captivity, from the inside out.
The Panther comes as close as anything to bringing Stevenson and Cuba's blur into focus for me.
Here are the photos the journalist Brin-Jonathan Butler took of Teofilo Stevenson that day in Cuba, it took some real balls for him to go there and interview Stevenson, but it was worth it, Stevenson is a legend, one of the greatest to ever do it.
It's one of boxing's greatest debates, could Teofilo Stevenson have beaten Muhammad Ali? I often wonder about it myself, Stevenson had the height advantage, reach advantage, was younger, but Ali was Ali, the greatest heavyweight ever, so well rounded.
Out of respect for both Teofilo Stevenson and Muhammad Ali, I really don't want to speculate on who would have won, I love them both, but the boxing fan in me just can't resist the urge, plus I know Eric would have wanted to know my opinion, so here goes. It depends on what year they would have fought, but one thing is for sure, Teofilo Stevenson isn't stopping Ali, no one ever did, Ali took bombs from some of the most murderous punchers in history, names like Liston, Shavers, Lyle, Foreman. If Stevenson is going to beat Ali, he'll have to outpoint him, which is going to be extremely difficult to do, Ali was such a complete fighter. I'm taking Ali by decision.
Back to Teofilo Stevenson, he was an all-time great though, and it's a shame we never got to see him turn professional, who knows, maybe he could have outpointed Ali, no one is unbeatable. I would have liked to have seen him up against the other heavyweights of the Golden era as well. Here's a few photos of Teofilo during his unbeaten dominant reign. You can see how big Teofilo was, just a behemoth of a man, he presence was very intimidating.
Jeff Fenech. Absolutely love watching him fight, Fenech was a violent storm that swept across the boxing landscape for a decade-plus and left many victims in its wake. The “Marrickville Mauler” was a late starter, taking up boxing at 17, but also a natural whose inhuman conditioning and swarming style resulted in a Hall of Fame career. The 1984 Olympian won his first pro title in only his seventh fight (stopping Satoshi Shingaki as a bantamweight in 1985) and would add titles in two more divisions (knockouts of Samart Payakaroon and Victor Callejas) inside his first 20 fights. And he almost won a fourth belt in a classic for which he might be best remembered. Fenech traveled to Las Vegas to challenge junior lightweight titleholder and future Hall of Famer Azumah "the professor" Nelson on the Mike Tyson-Donovan Ruddock II card in 1991, Fenech’s first fight outside of Australia. The challenger, attacking fiercely from beginning to end, did enough to claim a decision win and his defining victory but had to settle for a dubious draw. The decision was booed and an angry Fenech stormed out of the ring. That was Fenech’s last great performance, as Nelson stopped him in the rematch in Melbourne and he lost to Philip Holiday in his final title shot. However, Fenech had already made an indelible mark on the sport.
The first Jeff Fenech vs Azumah Nelson fight is one of my all-time favorites, it shows you what kind of fighter Fenech really was, a fearless and brutal bastard, and why he had the "Marrackville Mauler" nickname, he swarmed guys and mauled them. Most people that fought Azumah Nelson didn't have a happy story to tell afterwards, Azumah Nelson was a dangerous guy, he had brutal power, a high ring IQ, and was tough as hell, they don't call Nelson "the professor" for nothing, he schooled guys with sheer skills and brutality, Nelson took Wilfredo "bazooka" Gomez out, chopped him down like a tree. Anyway, Fenech went right after Nelson and had no fear whatsoever of Nelson and his brutal reputation, Fenech made Nelson fight his style of fight, Fenech swarmed Nelson with vicious pressure and forced him into the corner numerous times, and that fight really turned into a brutal trench war, just the kind of fight Fenech wanted and thrived in. Fenech bullied Nelson and had his way with him in the trenches. The fight was declared a draw and Fenech got pissed and stormed out the ring, and rightfully so, Fenech won that fight. Fenech was a fearless savage, to go in there and do that to the legendary Azumah Nelson was just unreal, nobody ever did that to Azumah Nelson. About 30 years after that fight, the WBC went back and reviewed it and declared that Jeff Fenech was robbed and they reversed the decision and awarded the fight and the super featherweight title to Jeff Fenech. That fight was that epic.
Australia’s Fenech awarded world title 31 years after controversial draw
Jeff Fenech has been awarded the World Boxing Council’s super-featherweight belt 31 years after being denied the title in a controversial draw against Azumah Nelson.
Australian boxing icon Jeff Fenech has been awarded the World Boxing Council’s super-featherweight belt 31 years after being denied the title in a controversial draw against Azumah Nelson.
A panel of WBC judges reassessed the June 28, 1991 fight at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas which lasted 12 rounds and resulted in Nelson keeping his belt. That decision was widely criticised by boxing pundits and Fenech later said he was never the same fighter after it.
“This time it was a UD (unanimous decision) for ‘The Marrackville Mauler.’ That makes a grand total of four WBC belts for him,” the WBC said in a statement on the reassessment.
One of his country’s greatest boxers, Fenech held the IBF bantamweight title from 1985 to 1987, the WBC super-bantamweight title from 1987 to 1988 and the WBC featherweight title from 1988 to 1990. “It would’ve meant more to me back when I really won the fight. But for them, the WBC, to do this is so special,” Fenech, 58, told News Corp media.
“Far out, it means so much to me.”
Prior to Nelson, Fenech had won 25 straight fights. He and Ghanaian Nelson had a rematch in Melbourne a year later, with the Australian knocked out in the eighth round in front of a huge crowd at Princes Park.
The pair reunited for another bout in Melbourne in 2008 when they were both middle aged, which Fenech won by majority decision.
Man Jeff Fenech was one tough son of a gun, he struggled with brittle hands his entire career, but despite that he made one heck of a name for himself. He wasn't known as a hard puncher, he broke you down with his relentless pressure, work rate, and volume punching. Here's a no holds barred interview with the man himself. He's one of my favorites because he really represents what this sport is about, you have to be brutal to make it in this sport, and though he wasn't the most skilled, he just brutalized guys and broke them down.
The People’s Champion: Jeff Fenech Salutes His Fans
“Nobody ever beat me when I was a world champion. I moved up [in weight division] each time undefeated. I lost fights, but never for any of my titles. I’ve had five hand operations, pins put in my hands, wedges of bones cut out of my hand so I could make a full fist, because pretty much for every fight I had broken hands.”
Hall-of-Famer Jeff Fenech campaigned in five weight divisions, was a successful three-weight world champion, and beat some of the most recognized names in boxing. He accomplished all of this in thirty-three professional fights. Sydney’s most celebrated sportsman tells us how and why he first decided to become a boxer, which wasn’t his sport of choice. “I played [Aussie rules] football all of my life and wanted to be a rugby league player. Then, when I was about seventeen and a half, I went to a youth club, not to learn to box but to see some guys we wanted to fight with. We searched this youth club, and they weren’t there and the last room we looked in had a sign which said ‘Boxing’ on it. Then I looked through the little window on the door. There was a friend of mine I went to school with who used to box, and we went in and saw him train. I then heard the trainer say they wanted someone to box him. Even though he was a few kilos heavier, I volunteered to fight him.”
“Next day, I went there and I boxed and it wasn’t the best experience. I got winded and beaten up a bit. But the trainer at the end of the session said, ‘Have you boxed before?’ I said ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Are you sure? You did really good. You should come back.’ At the start, I thought he was just bullshitting me to get me back there. In my mind, I didn’t want to go back because it’s not the best feeling when you’re not used to being hit in the stomach and being punched in the face. Anyway, I ended up convincing myself to go back and then a few months later, I was state champion, then six months later, national champion. I think we all have a hidden talent and I kind of found it, totally accidentally.”
Fenech’s amateur pedigree is often overshadowed by his successes in the professional arena. “People don’t know a lot about my career. Even though I only had twenty-six amateur fights, I won the Oceanic flyweight title in 1983, then shortly after went to the World Championships in Rome and got the bronze. Then in 1984 I went to the same Los Angeles Olympics as Evander Holyfield and all those guys.”
Fenech turned professional on October 12, 1984, and, barely four months later, “The Marrickville Mauler” became New South Wales State bantamweight champion. On April 26, 1995, with a record of six wins, all by knockout, he challenged defending IBF world bantamweight champion Satoshi Shingaki for his crown. Fenech recalled the moment. “I actually got the call couple a couple of months earlier, but he [Shingaki] got injured and pulled out. Then when it was all good to go, everyone was saying, ‘He’s never fought fifteen rounds. He won’t beat Shingaki,’ and all that. I trained harder than anybody ever. I could run ten kilometers in thirty and a half minutes. I did twelve and fifteen rounds of sparring a hundred times in the gym prior to the fight. I had three sparring partners in the ring at the same time. One minute each, so they could stay in the ring, and I’d get pushed to the limit.
“Jeff Harding [former WBC light-heavyweight world champion] was one of them. Another was a guy called Alan McNamara [another light-heavyweight] who was world-rated and was my main sparring partner. I always sparred big guys, including heavyweight Justin Fortune.”
Fenech stopped Shingaki in the ninth to claim his first world honors. But how did the newly-crowned champion deal with all the fame and adulation at the age of twenty? “From seventeen to twenty years old, I’d been all around the world boxing as an amateur and been at the Olympic games. I was the first Olympian from 1984 to win a world title and did so within 196 days from turning professional. It was crazy.
“I was one of those guys who used to say that fame and fortune would never change me, but it changes everybody. As much as you want to deny it and pretend you’re still the same person, it automatically changes you. I remember one day, I walked into the gym, I was in training for my rematch with Shingaki and my trainer, Johnny Lewis, said, ‘You see the door you walked through to get in here?’ I replied, ‘Yes, Johnny,’ and he said, ‘Well, turn around and get the fuck out of here.’ Those were his exact words. I’ll never forget that. He noticed the change in my attitude, not only boxing but a lot of other things. What he said refocused me. I had tears in my eyes. I apologized and made the changes I needed to, for a little while at least.
“Not long after, one of my very close friends had died. He left me $20,000 [Australian dollars]. Now, remember, I got paid $20,000 to fight for the world title, which isn’t a lot, but back then, for somebody who came from the street and never had a dollar, unless I stole something, that was a lot of cash. I remember saying to a friend of mine after winning the world title, ‘Wow. If I could get another $20,000, I’ll retire. I’ll be rich.’ I had no understanding of money and what I’d achieved. When I first started in boxing, the media used to criticize me for ‘Errming’ before giving an answer and all of a sudden I’m doing TV commercials. It was crazy.”
Over the next year, Fenech fought six times, including a second stoppage win over Shingaki, and a lopsided decision over unbeaten American Jerome Coffee [26-0 at the time] over the full fifteen championship rounds, to retain his IBF crown. His first fight of 1986, on April 11, was against ring legend Daniel Zaragoza. Fenech discussed the unenviable task. “The fight wasn’t sanctioned. What happened was, I was waiting to fight again, and he’d just lost his title [against Miguel ‘Happy’ Lora]. The media was saying that this would be a great fight for me because Zaragoza was finished and his career was over, but it would be a good scalp.
“Although I did come out victorious, over the next ten years he beat another twenty-seven opponents, including Paul Banke, Wayne McCullough, you name it. He was a great, great fighter, and even though I won every round, he was my toughest fight to date at that point, without a doubt.”
Three months after Zaragoza, Fenech, now 13-0 with eleven stoppages, took on unbeaten Steve McCrory (younger brother of former welterweight world champion, Milton). “I had a lot of pressure on me for this one because it was billed as ‘Olympic Revenge.’ Although we didn’t fight each other in the Olympics, he was gold medalist in 1984, and I got robbed [against silver medalist Redzep Redzepovski of Yugoslavia]. About two weeks prior to the fight, I broke my hand. I got it x-rayed, spoke to the promoter, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll cancel the fight and reschedule it.’ He said he’d announce that the day after I wouldn’t be fighting. So, I went and had some food, as I was starving.
“Then I receive a call in the morning. ‘Listen, Jeff. I’ve done the maths, and if you don’t fight, I’m going to be bankrupt.’ I replied, ‘I went out and put on nine pounds last night.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll put you on a health farm. I spent a week there on the farm, then two days before the fight I moved back into my house, and I was still about six pounds overweight. My promoter said, ‘Just get as close as you can to the weight, and we’ll relinquish the title on the scales. Just try to win the fight.’ I thought, ‘Okay,’ but I woke up that morning and ran 5K because I was still three pounds over. I’d starved myself for a couple of days, hadn’t drunk any water, but even after that run, I’d only lost a pound. I put the heaters on in the house and sat by one of them, but nothing came off. So I ran another 5K. Still a pound and a bit over. So I did another 5K. Then I collapsed. That’s 15K on the day of the fight. Remember, the weigh-in wasn’t twenty-four hours before back then; it was on the same day. We weighed in on the afternoon. My mum’s over at the house crying because I don’t feel good and my face was all drawn in.
“Despite everything, I made weight and I ended up stopping him in the fourteenth round of a tough fight. Under the circumstances, fighting with a broken hand and running 15K the morning of the fight, I did well to get through. Yeah, I lost a bit of energy, but I never lost my willpower to pull through that night.”
After the fight, Fenech had a hand operation, then, nine months later, he beat Tony Miller to pick up the Australian featherweight title. A month later, he took on the unbeaten, defending WBC world super-bantamweight champion, Samart Payakaroon, knocking him out in four rounds to become a two-weight world champion. The affable Aussie recalled the shoot-out with the tough Thai. “I knew he was a very good puncher. He’d knocked out Lupe Pintor and Juan Meza, two of the toughest Mexicans ever. Payakaroon came with a very tough reputation. When he came to Australia, everyone bet massive amounts on him to knock me out, but that was money lost for them. For me, it was one of my five-star performances. I kept the pressure on him and stayed close. I knocked him out so badly he had to spend the night in hospital. Usually, I wasn’t a one punch knockout artist, but that night, I fought one of my great fights.”
Fenech defended the world title twice against top opposition in Greg Richardson and ring legend Carlos Zarate [who at that point had only lost twice in sixty-eight fights]. “In his comeback, Zarate had won eleven fights in a row, ten inside the distance. He’d knocked out the number-one contender in the world, the American, Richard Savage. I knew that I had to be precise, keep my hands up high, not let him hit me, but put the pressure on. I wanted to give him something he’d never experienced before, so I really turned it up as much as I could. Whenever I see him today, God love him, he always says, ‘You could have fought in any era and beaten any champion. Nobody could have touched you.’ Coming from Carlos Zarate, that’s always special to hear.”
Five months later, Fenech took on Puerto Rican Victor Callejas for the vacant WBC world featherweight title, stopping him in the tenth round to become a three-weight world champion in a little under three years and five months of his debut. Fenech recalled: “Victor could punch. He hit me in the first round with a shot that nearly knocked me out. He struck me with an uppercut, and my hands dropped to my side and my equilibrium went for a few seconds. He was probably the dirtiest fighter I’ve ever fought, but the toughest. I respected him totally and thought he was a great fighter. I broke my right hand and I used my left hand for 75 percent of the fight. If I had my right hand, I have no doubt it wouldn’t have gone five rounds.”
Fenech defended his latest world title a further three further times over the next thirteen months, then took off the whole of 1990 due to two hand operations. After a tune-up fight against John Kalbhenn on January 19, 1991, Fenech took on “The Professor” and fellow Hall of Famer, the legendary Azumah Nelson, on June 28, 1991, putting his WBC world featherweight crown on the line.
After twelve hard-fought rounds, Fenech had to accept a contentious draw. “I wasn’t one of these fighters who trash-talked before fights. I let my fists do the talking. I’ve watched the tape ten million times, and it’s never more than three rounds to him in that fight. The only reason I admired him so much is because he came to my backyard for the rematch.”
The rematch occurred nine months later and was named The Ring magazine’s “Upset of the Year.” It was also Fenech’s first loss as a professional. “From my side, we just thought it was routine and that I was going to win. He went home, trained hard, and wanted to beat me badly. Whereas I came home, trained, messed about with women, out signing autographs, doing daily appearances. I was certain I was going to win and just didn’t prepare like he did and, on the night, I got a shock. He trained hard, worked twice as hard as I did, and knocked me out.”
Over a year later, on June 7, 1993, Fenech suffered defeat at the hands of American Calvin Grove, getting stopped in seven rounds. “I had another hand operation,” he recalled, “but it was like I had a realization after the last fight [against Nelson]. There came a time where I’d never been hurt in my life in my fights, but then I got knocked down against Nelson, and even when I was sparring for the Grove fight, I started to feel the punches, which I’d never had before. I sparred big guys and never felt it. But after all the years, that’s what happens. It all adds up.
“Emanuel Steward, the greatest trainer in the world by far, who trained me towards the end of my career, said, ‘Jeff, why would they make you fight Calvin Grove? He’s one of those quick guys who is awkward and speedy, and this is your first fight back in fifteen months. The people who looked after me really didn’t know much about the sport like Manny did. Then when I fought Calvin, I thought, ‘Wow. This guy hurt me like I’d never been hurt before. My mentality was, ‘I’ll get back in the office and everything is going to be okay. Once I get in that ring, everything will be fine.’ But in boxing, nothing disappears. All I can say is that on the night, somebody better beat me, and I give Grove all the credit for it.”
Fenech continued. “I retired after that fight, but then I got that boxing bug. That little thing that calls you back in. It’s hard to stay away. I’d never done anything apart from box as a profession, so I craved it all. The notoriety, the success, the action, and when people pat you on the back. I went for it again.”
After almost two and a half years out, Fenech had a pair of tune-up fights before taking on unbeaten 27-0 defending champion Phillip Holiday for his IBF world lightweight crown. He was stopped in the second round. This was to prove his third and final defeat.
Six years later, in 2002, Fenech got the call all fighters wait for. “It was my first year of eligibility for the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and I got in on my first go, which I was delighted about. People sometimes wait twenty years to get in. Being inducted means more than any of my world titles. When you get recognition from your peers who have made it within the sport, that’s when you know you’ve made it. That’s the ultimate accolade.”
After retirement, Fenech didn’t stray far from boxing, training several fighters, including Danny Green. However, it was his time tutoring Mike Tyson that generated the most media attention. “For years, I’d been doing stuff with Mike. Going on runs, doing pads. I was always the guy in the background. What people don’t realize is, when he fought Clifford Etienne [February 22, 2003], I trained him for the whole fight. I’d trained him for the full eight weeks. Lived with him and did everything together, then about two or three days before the fight he walks in with this big tattoo all over his face. I didn’t think they were going to let him fight with a fresh tattoo, so I jumped on a plane and went home. I was obviously very disappointed with him.”
Fenech was in Iron Mike’s corner for his last contest against Kevin McBride on June 11, 2005. “I pulled Mike out [retired in the sixth round]. First and foremost, he’s my friend. A great friend, in fact. I promised Mike’s family that I wouldn’t let him get hurt. That’s my job. I could see he didn’t have what it takes. I could see it in his eyes that he didn’t want to be in there, so I got in the ring and stopped the fight.”
But where did Fenech see a peak Tyson among the all-time heavyweight greats? “A fit Mike Tyson? Look toward the end of his career. All those guys were hitting him with no problem, whereas in his prime, his speed was just amazing. They would have never hit him. Then throw in that speed with his power, and he was devastating. He could have been the greatest of all time, ever. At his peak, I don’t think there’s anybody that could beat him.”
Twelve years after hanging up the gloves, Fenech was back in the ring to complete the trilogy with Nelson. However, the fight was never planned as many believed. “I don’t even look at that as a fight. I was in Thailand and somebody said to me, ‘Why don’t we put on a rematch between you and Samart Payakaroon?’ I said, ‘Let’s do it!’ I’d organized all this stuff and thought, ‘This is going to be great.’ Then all of a sudden, as we’re close to sorting a deal, he rings up and says, ‘Listen, Samart’s asking for silly money, so we can’t do it.’ So he approached Azumah Nelson and asked if he’d take the fight and he said, ‘Yes.’ Listen, we both trained hard and it was a great fight, but I don’t take credit for beating Azumah Nelson in that fight. I was forty-four and he was forty-nine. We put on a good show, and that was it.” Fenech added. “I don’t talk to him [Nelson] all the time, but I rate him as one of the greatest fighters in the sport. To be able to come back the way he did, represent his country, he’s an amazing human being. It was great sharing a ring with him.”
Fenech signed off with a nostalgic grudge and an endearing homage to his fans. “I have billions of regrets in boxing. Trainers, promoters, they robbed me, lied to me and deceived me. When I look back and evaluate, it’s a sad story. When you work hard, I think you deserve to get paid what you’re worth, and I didn’t. Guys fighting on my undercards were earning bigger money than me. I would have loved to have fought more in the US, but that’s been and gone now.”
“But listen, one thing I will always be grateful for is the boxing fans. If it wasn’t for the public, Australia, the people who paid to watch me fight, I’d be nobody. My time will always be 110 percent to the normal person. I’m no different to other guys. If there’s five people asking for an autograph, I’ll sign five. If there’s a hundred thousand, I’ll make sure I sign each and every last one. Without those people, I’d be a nobody and have nothing. I’ll always be grateful for them. Thank you.”
Jeff Fenech forcing Azumah Nelson into the corner during their first encounter, this is where a lot of the fight was spent, Fenech forced Nelson into the corner and they really went to war and Fenech got the best of the exchanges. Fenech had Nelson right where he wanted him. It was the damnest thing I've ever seen, it took some balls to pull off this strategy, Azumah Nelson was a dangerous guy and Fenech slipped quite a few lethal punches from Nelson and just kept pounding away at Nelson. But that was Jeff Fenech's style, he liked it down in the trenches, I didn't think he would be able to control Nelson and force him into a fight like that but he did and he had his way with Nelson. To do that to a dangerous guy like Nelson is one of the craziest things I've ever seen in this sport.
Anyway, Jeff Fenech was one of my favorite fighters of all-time, I wish there were more like him these days, nothing cute about his style, he was just gonna brutalized you.
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Here is a photo of Herol Graham, and that young lad to his left would later grow up to be the great Prince Naseem Hamed, one of the greatest featherweights in history. Like I said earlier, Naseem Hamed idolized Herol Graham and learned a lot from him.
Herol Graham and Mike "the bodysnatcher" McCallum before their fight. Herol Graham held his own against McCallum, but McCallum got the decision. Mike McCallum is another one of my all-time favorites, he was nicknamed "the bodysnatcher" because he was a vicious body puncher, more on him later.
Herol Graham Knocks out Jimmy Price.
Herol Graham checks out some jewelry.
Herol "bomber" Graham in his prime.
"Sugar" Shane Mosley. He was one of the best I've ever seen in his prime, he was like a lightweight version of Mike Tyson, brutal knockout power, threw vicious punches in combinations, had very fast hands, explosive as hell, could strike as quick as a snake. He would be standing there one minute, all over you like a cheap suit the next, he could put a guy to sleep out of nowhere. He was so much fun to watch at his best, highly combustible.
Mosley was dangerous in his prime, nobody looked forward to stepping in the ring with him, he could crack like hell.
Mosley was always a threat in any fight because he could really punch, he carried brutal power, one misstep and he could take you out.
Fernando Vargas after one of his encounters with Shane Mosley, Vargas fought Mosley twice and was stopped both times.
Shane Mosley terrorized the lightweight division during his time, much the same way Roberto Duran did, although I wouldn't quite put him on Duran's level. Mosley was a boxing fans dream fighter, action packed, explosive, with speed and power. I would love to see Shane Mosley vs Roberto Duran, one of my dream lightweight fights.
Shane Mosley in his prime.
Teofilo Stevenson, oh boy, where to begin with him. He was a heavyweight, he won three straight Olympic Gold medals for Cuba in the heavyweight division. He was a behemoth of a man, 6'5", just a monster. Getting in the ring with him must have been like challenging Goliath to a fight. Not only this, but he is one of the greatest boxers in the history of the sport, he won over 300 fights and was unbeaten for 11 years. The only thing is, he was from communist Cuba, which during his time was under the rule of Fidel Castro. That's where the story takes a dark turn, Teofilo Stevenson was so great and so dominant that everyone wanted him to fight Muhammad Ali, it's one of the biggest "what ifs" in the history of the sport. In fact, Teofilo Stevenson was offered $5 million to turn professional and fight Ali, but Stevenson was a national hero in Cuba, and he turned it down. He didn't want to disappoint Castro and his regime. So Teofilo Stevenson never went pro, and he just sort of faded from the boxing scene, and that was that. But there can be no doubt, he was one of the greatest heavyweights in the history of the sport, the man was just dominant, there's no other way to describe it. He won Gold in Munich in 1972, he won Gold in Montreal in 1976, and he won Gold in Moscow in 1980. He was unbeaten in the Olympics for 11 years until he finally lost. His story is frustrating for boxing fans because we always wonder, how he would have fared against the pros here in the states, in particular Muhammad Ali, Stevenson was an all-time great, he had knockout power, great movement for a big guy, and could box like crazy, watching him on film is like watching a bunch of lambs being led to slaughter. Anyway, he just kind of faded from the boxing scene after a while and spent the rest of his life in communist Cuba. He was always a national hero in Cuba, but he ended up becoming a poor alcoholic recluse, and died that way. In 2011, a journalist from the United States went to try to interview him, Stevenson didn't like being interviewed by journalists, and hated being on film or photographed, but this journalist was determined.
Brin-Jonathan Butler | June 10, 2014
HÉROES FOR SALE
TEÓFILO STEVENSON, YASIEL PUIG AND THE AGONY OF THE CUBAN ATHLETE
"What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?"
That was how Stevenson, the second most famous Cuban after you-know-who, replied to offers to abandon his island and become a professional to fight Muhammad Ali. At the time, Stevenson was perhaps the only man on the planet who was not only Ali's equal in the ring, but could surpass him in what the poet Federico Garcia Lorca referred to as duende, that ephemeral quality that separates the immortals from the rest of us, that causes women to cry and men to swoon. Stevenson was someone authentic, a man whose pride and principle bowed to no one.
By now Stevenson was a full-blown alcoholic without enough money to replace a flat tire for his car.
"Cuba's best athletes don't stay there because of love of country," the Miami-based journalist Dan Le Batard wrote in the recent "Cuba Issue" of ESPN The Magazine to which I also contributed. "If the government were to collapse, if the rules were to change, those athletes would end up lapping onto our shores like so many waves, families in tow." Le Batard, born in New Jersey to Cuban parents, then zeroed in on Stevenson's famous words and explained, "This is one of the propaganda machine's greatest quotes, but it is also the largest kind of lie, the one that has to be told when the truth is not allowed. First of all, Stevenson didn't have any understanding of what those dollars meant."
So who does understand? A man with nothing or a man with everything? Stevenson seemed to encompass both extremes. In May of 2011, when I sat down with Teófilo Stevenson in his modest home in the comfortable Havana neighborhood of Nautico, his precarious physical state gave every indication, contrary to Le Batard's estimation, that Fidel's "favorite athlete" bore all the scars of turning down the life he might have lived away from his beloved island. By now Stevenson was a full-blown alcoholic without enough money to replace a flat tire for his car. Yet while his life remained an open wound, I saw no evidence of regret or deceit as he offered the reasons behind an impossible decision. On the other side of the 90 miles that separate Cuba from the United States, it wasn't as if Mike Tyson, having earned nearly half a billion dollars in the ring, had been less damaged.
When Stevenson agreed to talk about all the millions he turned down, he asked me for money, about $100. I suppose you could choose one of those sums as a symbol to define the man and neatly illuminate who he was and what he stood for. Then again, if you just chose one, I'm more inclined to think your choice illuminates a lot more about who you are.
Last month, two years after Stevenson's death, I arranged to meet with his daughter, Helmys, on the tiny Mexican island of Isla Mujeres, just off the Cancun coast where she's lived and worked for over half of her 30 years. Isla Mujeres had just been splashed all over the news, revealed as the place where in 2012 Yasiel Puig, the latest Cuban defector superstar athlete, and now an outfielder for the Dodgers, had been held hostage at machete-point in a dingy hotel room until a ransom for his freedom was paid.
Late one warm night, I picked Helmys up at the island's ferry terminal. She was easy to spot in the crowd, as striking in her own way as her father. Aside from her beauty, even without her heels she was a head taller than most of the men around her. I looked at her a few moments before she saw me and waved a hand high above her head like Venus Williams in mid-serve. She was another of these girls Cuba has in abundance, women who seem as if they entered the world peeled off a cigar box, all curves and color.
With some clues from Katz, I spent a couple weeks sniffing around Isla Mujeres. I was looking for the motel where Puig was held after he'd swum ashore in darkness against riptides and blindly negotiated razor sharp coral after being dumped from a smuggler's boat.
She then pointed out the beach where the most recent smuggler's boat arrived and where three people drowned before reaching shore. A handful of refugees were arrested, but the rest scattered and disappeared on the island. A long-abandoned, half-built timeshare condominium complex stood watch over the desolate shore. A flapping red flag warned tourists not to enter the water due to deadly currents. A mile away, a dozen cigarette boats were docked next to the heavily guarded Mexican naval base. Soldiers patrolled the nearby tourist beaches armed with M-16s as locals sauntered around the sand peddling jewelry.
Nowhere I've ever been can break your heart and leave it bleeding like Havana.
As far as cities go, Havana is a festering treasure chest, a primary color. Isla Mujeres' paint kit is fresher, but still, somehow, not as bright. There are a lot of cities in this world that can break your balls, but nowhere I've ever been can break your heart and leave it bleeding like Havana. When you leave the scab comes off and never heals. And after you first arrive, you're told by many that everyone deserves to have Havana as a ciudad natal, a hometown. This is an ugly condition I'll confess very uneasily: I'm homesick for a place I wasn't born to.
Forget the question of whether or not he could have beaten Ali. Stevenson could have been Ali.
I have a dirty little habit of distilling every city I've ever visited into the historical person I'd have most wanted to meet and share a cigarette with. From the first moment I stepped foot in Havana my dream was to speak with Teófilo Stevenson, Cuba's twisted answer to Vincent van Gogh. If van Gogh, in part, captured the world's imagination by not being able to sell masterpieces, Stevenson did so by turning down every offer. The world knew he was good, but they weren't sure how good. Shortly after Stevenson's death, George Foreman told me Stevenson was far and away the best heavyweight fighter of his era. He was sure that if Stevenson had left Cuba and become a professional he could have been the dominant heavyweight of his time. And of course, Stevenson had that shot at Muhammad Ali, not just to defect, but to conquer. But it was a lot more than that, too. Forget the question of whether or not he could have beaten Ali. Stevenson could have been Ali. How much was that worth? What was the cost of saying no to that? Could there be a principled position to justify such a refusal? The answer depends on who you ask.
I tried for years to ask that of Stevenson, but when I finally heard his voice over the phone agree to sit down on camera, I assumed my days in Cuba were numbered. I knew that showing the condition Stevenson was in to the world would go over on the island about as well as releasing a sex tape of Michelle Obama in the States. If, at his height, Stevenson was an emblematic hero of everything that succeeded for the revolution, his deterioration remained just as potent for what had failed.
I wasn't happy about that. Exploring Castro's pawns in Cuba and exposing anything negative also makes you a pawn to all his enemies 90 miles away. Both sides don't have much of a track record for nuance of opinion.
Of course, there was nothing unique about the circumstances of Puig's story any more than there was with Stevenson's. "Se fue" (he left) and "se quedo" (he stayed) are decisions that have circumscribed and defined the identity of every Cuban family and have been around since Fidel Castro and the revolution split in half nearly every family on the island. This is Cuba's answer to "Sophie's Choice."
Isla Mujeres, only four miles long, has become an even more desirable destination for smugglers than the Cancun mainland three miles away. From Isla Mujeres' seawall Malecon to Havana's is 308 miles, to the western edge of Cuba, only 96 — about the same distance from Cuba to Miami. Some vessels, I was told, took as long as 18 days to make the journey. On the way, boats capsize, people drown, children starve and dehydrate — people are sometimes tossed into the water if the boats are given chase. I've reviewed grainy U.S. Coast Guard footage of some of these human atrocities and it looks like something from the foul corners of Goya's imagination. Many believe that the ocean separating Cuba from the United States represents the largest graveyard on earth. One of the first jokes I heard upon visiting Cuba asked, "What is the primary source of food for sharks in the Florida Straits?" The answer? Cubanos. Ja, ja,
I interviewed Teófilo Stevenson in his home in May of 2011, the same week Osama bin Laden, the CIA's "most dangerous man in the world," was taken out. On the way over to Stevenson's house I drove past a dozen billboards of Che Guevara, Cuba's most revered revolutionary hero. Today, most Americans know him from a popular tourist T-shirt, even worn by one New Yorker I saw celebrating Bin Laden's death by lighting a Cohiba cigar. But Che was also executed by CIA order back when he was listed as the "most dangerous man in the world." I wondered if kitsch could do to Bin Laden one day what it did to Che's legacy.
I'd already taken one too many chances interviewing famous boxers under surveillance by the government. You never know with Cuba whether you've arrived at the wrong place at the right time, the right place at the wrong time, or — the most sinister of all — simply the last time. Cars full of strangers would pass by gleefully pointing up at security cameras. If the police were coming, they were coming. I called Stevenson again from a pay phone and he reluctantly agreed to meet.
OK then, fuck it. One way or another, I would never have another chance. If any place appreciated a pair of balls this was supposed to be the town. Hold on tightly, let go lightly. I stopped a gypsy cab and offered him a day's fare for a round trip to take me and my translator across town to Stevenson's home in Nautico, near the Marina Hemingway.
The translator told me that the best chance we had to coax Stevenson into talking on camera was to bring him some suitably "respectful" vodka as a present. Stevenson was known to trick a lot of journalists into throwing him a party for everyone he could find on the street and then, when the time came to film curtly call the evening to a close. My friend Bobby Cassidy, a writer in New York, had been duped in the same manner.
When we arrived in Nautico, we grabbed a bottle from a kiosk and walked the rest of the way to Stevenson's house. The neighborhood was green and lush, far more cheerful than Felix Savón's (Cuba's answer to Mike Tyson, a boxer who turned down $20 million for a crack at Tyson's title), but reports of Fidel giving Stevenson a "mansion" were nothing more than propaganda. What passes for a luxurious neighborhood in Cuba is, by American standards, sad and drab and nondescript. Fresh coats of paint and old Russian cars — Ladas locked behind fenced-in driveways — are the only signs of relative affluence. Most Cubans elsewhere, of course, have no money for cars, or paint.
My translator was very quiet the closer we got to Stevenson's home. It was clear that he was having second thoughts about being involved with this. He'd spent time with Stevenson before, translating for diplomats who wanted to meet him. He had not enjoyed the experience.
"How bad is he?" I asked him.
"Have you ever spoken to him on the phone when he isn't drunk?"
"I don't think so," I said.
"Exactly," he shook his head.
"He needs the money. So do I. So does everybody in this fucking country."
In conversation, he often didn't know what day or month it was. I was never sure if he was joking. He'd switch from English to Spanish to Russian. If Ali was locked in his body as the cost for his career, what was the price Stevenson paid locked in the vice of this body politic?
"I think it's fairly obvious how bad he is, isn't it?" my translator lamented. "He's not meeting you for the pleasure of speaking with a foreign journalist. He needs the money. So do I. So does everybody in this fucking country. This man is a great hero of mine and to many around the world and having him reduced to this makes me feel ashamed."
"Do you even think he'll talk with us?" I asked.
"I doubt on camera. He's not well. There's his car up ahead. There." He pointed to a rusting, green, early-1990s Toyota behind a fence. "That's his. He turned down $5 million and he drives that. Do you think I'm proud of my country for that? That's the house of Teó. By Cuban standards it's nice, but in Miami he would have lived in a palace. You want to know how hard things have gotten? He doesn't even have enough money to put tires on that car."
In 1987, Stevenson had been involved in what many assumed was an alcohol-related car accident that took a motorcyclist's life. The crime, if indeed it was one, was swept under the rug to preserve Stevenson's iconic status. He was never charged or convicted of any wrongdoing, and although he slowly receded from public view, symbolically he remained a lodestar for Cuba's moral compass. Many Cubans still set their moral watches to Stevenson's clock, and even those opposed to his socialist principles admire the man's courage and conviction.
I wasn't looking forward to undermining that. Galileo wasn't put in prison because he was wrong about anything he discovered looking through his telescope; rather, he was incarcerated simply because he saw what others didn't wish to see.
When we arrived at Stevenson's driveway we could see through the padlocked fence that his front door was open. My translator hollered out and a few tense moments later Stevenson, shirtless and in blue track pants, a cigarette dangling from his lips, wound his stiff 6'5 frame into the entry way with care, bracing himself against the door jamb. I wasn't sure if the fragility in Stevenson's movements owed more to his boxing career or the booze. Nonetheless, he'd recently celebrated his 59th birthday and still looked lean and handsome.
Stevenson approached us, holding out the key to his gate while my translator turned to me with a look of dread.
Teófilo Stevenson won his first Olympic gold medal in 1972 and his last world amateur championship in 1986. He won 302 fights and once went 11 years without a single loss. The offer to fight Muhammad Ali came after Stevenson won his second Olympic gold medal in Montreal in 1976. $5 million were on the table when Stevenson counter-punched at capitalism and asked, "What is $1 million compared to the love of eight million Cubans?"
Ali was a man adept at finding weakness in his opponents and cruelly exploiting it to his own advantage, yet he never saw weakness in Stevenson, not even in his refusal to turn professional and face him in the ring. He admired a man standing up for what he believed in, as Ali had done, refusing to compromise his beliefs to fight in Vietnam. In 1996 and 1998, Ali donated a total of $1.7 million worth of medical aid to Cuba as a way of opposing the economic embargo against the island nation, which had contributed so much to the brutal economic crisis of the previous decade. Stevenson greeted Ali at Havana's international airport and they were inseparable during both of Ali's visits, equals.
Stevenson pried open his lock and pulled back the gate until we had entered and then proceeded to lock us in. There were rumors that he kept a pistol Fidel had given him personally for protection. He offered a warm handshake and smiled, yet his eyes were bloodshot and turned sad the moment he noticed my camera.
"Please come inside," he said in English.
"You like speaking English?" I asked.
"As long as he doesn't start the Russian ..." My translator smiled in Stevenson's direction.
Once we got inside his home — surrounded by photographs, mementos and trophies — Stevenson pointed to a chair for me to sit in while he sat across from me, the street visible to him out the open front door. I quickly realized why this was: Every last person who walked by, spotting Stevenson, sang his name in joy, raising a hand of praise, and it lifted his spirits. I handed the bottle of vodka to Stevenson and he tilted his head in thanks, asking the translator if he could go back into the kitchen and bring out some cups and orange juice for us.
Even though at the time I had no idea that this was going to be the last interview of Stevenson's life before his sudden death a year later in June 2012, I knew this wasn't going to be easy. Suddenly it got considerably worse.
I turned and began attaching my camera to a small tripod. I was in the process of stretching out and unfolding it just as Stevenson lit another cigarette, turned to our translator, and said in Spanish:
"Tell him he has to pay, or there is no interview. Make him come up with something."
"How much do we ask for?" my translator asked Stevenson.
"You tell me," Stevenson grunted. "You have experience in this. Give him a number."
"I say we ask for 80 or a hundred. I'm broke."
"OK." Stevenson shrugged. "But I'm worse off than you. If I say there is no interview—"
Just then he noticed the camera pointed in his direction. "Don't film me now. No camera! Put the camera away."
I swung the camera away.
Stevenson was in an impossible situation. He not only rejected America's millions, but he also had to pretend there was no consequence. Stevenson had to be just as defiant in his choice as Puig was pretending he'd reached salvation entering American life with no lingering pain. Zero tolerance for dissent on this point cuts both ways. The emotional truth remains hidden.
He not only rejected America's millions, but he also had to pretend there was no consequence.
"Is it off?" Stevenson growled.
I turned it off.
The translator spread out three cups before Stevenson and placed a large bottle of orange juice next to the vodka.
"We can talk, but I don't want to be filmed."
"If you grant me an interview I have to film." I said. "That's why I'm here."
"For $100 you can film the pictures on my wall and have the audio of our interview."
"I'm sorry," I laughed. "On the phone I asked for a filmed interview. That's why I came here. That's my work."
Stevenson put out his cigarette on the floor and looked for another in an empty pack. I offered him one of mine.
"What is this?"
"American Spirit," I said.
"You want Teófilo Stevenson to smoke American Spirit?" He spat out the words. "Why did I ever let you in my house?"
With that, Stevenson went about preparing three drinks in the large paper cups. He filled all three cups to the brim, but two had nine parts orange juice to one part vodka, while the last had nine parts vodka to just a token splash of orange juice. Half the bottle of vodka was already gone.
"OK." Stevenson laughed. "How long you want for our interview?"
"An hour?" I said.
Stevenson nodded thoughtfully and reached down for the suicide screwdriver and hoisted it up toward me.
"Fuck that shit." I waved it off. "I don't even drink." I knew the drill. I had seen my own father try to drink himself to death, just as Stevenson was doing now.
"My friend" — Stevenson snickered — "my deal is this. If you pay $130, you can have an hour with me on camera and film my trophy walls and pictures with Fidel and Ali."
"Done." I reached over to my camera.
"Annnnnnnd," Stevenson added, "The time starts now but you can only begin filming once you finish this drink. These are my terms."
"Those are your terms?"
"Yes." Stevenson smiled coyly. "Do you accept my terms?"
"Deal."
I took the cup of vodka, chugged it in five or six excruciating gulps, struggled not to vomit in Stevenson's living room for the next few moments, and once it had finally settled in my stomach, I reached over to turn the camera on to catch Stevenson's reaction.
"Nooooo!"
"Deal's a deal, campeon."
The translator shook his head. "You're both insane. What am I doing here?"
"OK, one minute," Stevenson pleaded. "One minute." He staggered to his feet and wobbled his way into the dining room and found a shirt and cap after tossing aside some dominos on his dinner table. He returned in a Che Guevara T-shirt and gray cap as armor and stared at me like an old lion.
I started filming. "Are you happy with your life in Cuba?" I asked him, my voice shaking. "Are you happy with the life you've had?"
"Happy? I'm happy. I'm very happy."
"No regrets?"
"No."
"Why is that so hard for people to believe?"
"There are people who become immoral. I would never do that. I endure until the end."
"I've just come from Ireland, where (Cuban boxer) Guillermo Rigondeaux had his last fight. He told me you defended him after he tried to defect."
"The Cuban system helped him. Where he grew up, in Santiago de Cuba? They did not have the conditions that the revolution has created today. He should have respected that."
"Félix Savón told me he felt Rigondeaux betrayed the Cuban people," I said.
"I rejected all that money. Because they wanted me to stay out there in the United States like Rigondeaux and the rest of them. Rigondeaux decided to leave. He wasn't allowed to box anymore in Cuba. He betrayed the Cuban people. And ... he left."
"What does this decision feel like to stay or to leave?" I asked Stevenson. "Is it a decision from the mind or the heart?"
"There are decisions that emerge from your heart and your soul and those decisions can't be betrayed. Now please stop the cameras for a moment. I don't want the children to see the champ smoking, please. It's a bad example."
Helmys wore a long a white dress with her curly hair hanging over her shoulders. While she was built long and lithe like an Olympic swimmer, her arms were as large and sculpted as any middleweight boxer I'd ever seen.
"You lift trucks for a living in Cancun or what?" I asked her.
"I do no exercise," she blushed. "I'm fortunate with good genetics."
"You know, women box in the Olympics now."
"I heard."
"Maybe to settle the argument between your dad and Muhammad Ali I could promote a fight between you and one of Ali's daughters."
"Laila Ali was a world champion!"
"So was her dad when Teófilo got all those offers to fight him."
"I'll consider it."
Just as Ali and Stevenson bore an uncanny physical resemblance, Helmys could have easily passed as one of Ali's daughters. But I wondered how different her life would have been if she had enjoyed the benefits Ali's children enjoyed from his fame and fortune. Teófilo Stevenson was a national hero, but he could never offer his two children the comforts and security of the millions Ali would leave behind. Yet I saw no sign of this fact burdening this lovely girl in any way.
After I warned Helmys of the distance to where I had in mind for us to have dinner, she exchanged her heels for flip-flops.
I took her to the same hotel where Yasiel Puig was held captive under threat of having his arm chopped off by a machete until the ransom was paid. It was the only hotel that fit all the basic clues Katz had provided me: U-shaped, with a pool, looking out over the water at the huge Mexican flag on Cancun, and a drunken stumble away from that strip club. Katz had tried for weeks to identify it on Google images, but failed. Since Puig had been held there, the hotel had undergone a massive renovation. I wonder where the money came from to finance that? My aunt was certain the previous incarnation of the hotel was the dive Katz wrote about in his piece.
We walked in the darkness along the shoulder of the road, a New York avenue worth of land dividing two seas. Helmys wasn't wearing perfume, but the scent wafting off her hair, detonated by moonlight or something, was remarkably distracting.
"How did you leave Cuba?" I asked her.
"I studied international tourism in Mexico. I applied for a visa to stay and work in Mexico. I visit my home in Cuba as often as I can."
"Where did you grow up in Havana?" I asked.
"The house you visited, where my father eventually moved to, was in Nautico. We had the only swimming pool in that neighborhood, but he wouldn't use it for swimming. He liked turtles and ducks and let them use it. But before that home Fidel gave us a house near the Plaza de la Revolución, where he spoke to the Cuban people. Actually, our house was next door to Che Guevara's widow. Che's children were all my friends growing up."
"And was Fidel close with your father?"
"Very close," she slapped my arm for emphasis, as only the daughter of a three-time Olympic Champion might. "After I was born my father introduced me to Fidel and apparently I pulled his beard very hard while he craddled me in his arms."
"So you knew him while you grew up?"
"Of course. But I was ... not terrified of him. I could not speak to him ever. It was Fidel! But always I would ask my father if we were somewhere with Fidel in attendance. ‘Please, can I speak to him?' And my father would ask Fidel to come over and he always would and I had no power of speech. It annoyed my father. But I just could never speak to him."
"Do you ever think about the kind of life you could have had if your father had taken all that money to leave?"
"Money is very nice," she smiled, carressing the shoulder she'd slapped before. "But I wasn't raised that way. I had a beautiful life in Cuba and I'm very happy with my life now."
"You don't think your father ever regretted his decision?"
"He had a beautiful life and gave me a beautiful life also. He was exactly who he wanted to be."
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Stevenson poses for a portrait in 2006. (Getty Images)
"No. Was it an easy decision? No. Not for anyone. My father lived the life he always wanted to live on his terms. Maybe he lived it too much and it cost him an old age. But he had a beautiful life and gave me a beautiful life also. He was exactly who he wanted to be."
Helmys and I passed by the Casablanca, the dingy strip club Katz had mentioned, cigarette butts and bottlecaps studded into their dirty driveway. We could hear Britney Spears singing inside, but no light was visible. The club was hidden from the little road by a hedge, a bit like a double-chin hidden by a beard.
"Do you know about Yasiel Puig?" I asked her. "The baseball player who has become so famous in Los Angeles."
"Sure. Many Cubans come to this island or Cancun every year. Some, like him, are athletes who come for all that money waiting for them in the United States."
"You don't feel strongly one way or the other about his choice?"
"He has to live with his choice and whether it was right for him. I judge no one. It's none of my business."
"What about when people judge your father's choice? What about the people who don't believe anyone could do what he did?"
She shrugged. "Just because someone does not agree with him or his reasons does not mean they have to accuse him of being a liar."
I only had the chance to meet Helmys' father once and I was sorry from the first minute that our exchange wounded a great man's pride, that for many it would reduce him. It took about the same amount of time with his daughter to realize he must have been as proud of his legacy, raising her, as he was of anything he accomplished inside or outside of a ring on behalf of the revolution.
"I brought some photos to show you of my father that I carry on my phone. I thought you would appreciate them. Some photos of my father and Fidel. My father and me. Many have never been published. Would you like to see them?"
She stood next to me, her hair in my face, and warmly flipped through the photos of her father's life. While there were no boxing photos in her collection, everything she showed me illumintated all things I'd imagine he fought for. From his honeymoon to intimate moments with his family, to being introduced to Nelson Mandela, to doing the wave with Fidel at the Pan Am Games — all of it was bigger than life and handled with a coy smirk worthy of any iconic Hollywood movie star.
"Jesus, your dad was a handsome guy," I said.
As she stared at her father's face on the screen she corrected me, "He wasn't handsome. My father was beautiful."
Two years before, I had watched Helmys at her father's funeral as nearly a thousand Cubans in attendance collectively broke down in tears to mourn his loss. I watched her comfort her brother as Stevenson's coffin was lowered into the ground and every face in view grieved a beloved hero. I included footage of this event in my film as a means of contrasting how the prospective funerals of defector Cuban boxing champions might look in America, so far removed from friends and family back home, by comparison.
I wasn't looking to villify or judge either decision, what I wanted put on trial had always been the insiduous choice itself, something Puig and Stevenson and so many others know so well.
Trying to understand Stevenson's life and death, I asked my father to watch my interview with him. It was a tense hour, he saw a bit of himself in Stevenson, as did I.
When the film ended, my father referred me to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1905, Rilke was working as a secretary to the sculptor Rodin and confessed he was no longer writing. The artist sent him to the zoo and told him to look at an animal until he saw it. Rilke imagined the view from captivity, from the inside out.
The Panther comes as close as anything to bringing Stevenson and Cuba's blur into focus for me.
Here are the photos the journalist Brin-Jonathan Butler took of Teofilo Stevenson that day in Cuba, it took some real balls for him to go there and interview Stevenson, but it was worth it, Stevenson is a legend, one of the greatest to ever do it.
Teofilo Stevenson was referred to as "the Cuban Ali" and of course the dream fight would have been Ali vs Stevenson.
It's one of boxing's greatest debates, could Teofilo Stevenson have beaten Muhammad Ali? I often wonder about it myself, Stevenson had the height advantage, reach advantage, was younger, but Ali was Ali, the greatest heavyweight ever, so well rounded.
Ali and Stevenson together in 1996.
Out of respect for both Teofilo Stevenson and Muhammad Ali, I really don't want to speculate on who would have won, I love them both, but the boxing fan in me just can't resist the urge, plus I know Eric would have wanted to know my opinion, so here goes. It depends on what year they would have fought, but one thing is for sure, Teofilo Stevenson isn't stopping Ali, no one ever did, Ali took bombs from some of the most murderous punchers in history, names like Liston, Shavers, Lyle, Foreman. If Stevenson is going to beat Ali, he'll have to outpoint him, which is going to be extremely difficult to do, Ali was such a complete fighter. I'm taking Ali by decision.
Back to Teofilo Stevenson, he was an all-time great though, and it's a shame we never got to see him turn professional, who knows, maybe he could have outpointed Ali, no one is unbeatable. I would have liked to have seen him up against the other heavyweights of the Golden era as well. Here's a few photos of Teofilo during his unbeaten dominant reign. You can see how big Teofilo was, just a behemoth of a man, he presence was very intimidating.
Teofilo batters his prey in the corner.
Man, Teofilo was intimidating, just look how big he is, combine that with his fighting ability, he was a monster.
The legendary Teofilo Stevenson in his prime.
The great Teofilo Stevenson.
Jeff Fenech. Absolutely love watching him fight, Fenech was a violent storm that swept across the boxing landscape for a decade-plus and left many victims in its wake. The “Marrickville Mauler” was a late starter, taking up boxing at 17, but also a natural whose inhuman conditioning and swarming style resulted in a Hall of Fame career. The 1984 Olympian won his first pro title in only his seventh fight (stopping Satoshi Shingaki as a bantamweight in 1985) and would add titles in two more divisions (knockouts of Samart Payakaroon and Victor Callejas) inside his first 20 fights. And he almost won a fourth belt in a classic for which he might be best remembered. Fenech traveled to Las Vegas to challenge junior lightweight titleholder and future Hall of Famer Azumah "the professor" Nelson on the Mike Tyson-Donovan Ruddock II card in 1991, Fenech’s first fight outside of Australia. The challenger, attacking fiercely from beginning to end, did enough to claim a decision win and his defining victory but had to settle for a dubious draw. The decision was booed and an angry Fenech stormed out of the ring. That was Fenech’s last great performance, as Nelson stopped him in the rematch in Melbourne and he lost to Philip Holiday in his final title shot. However, Fenech had already made an indelible mark on the sport.
The first Jeff Fenech vs Azumah Nelson fight is one of my all-time favorites, it shows you what kind of fighter Fenech really was, a fearless and brutal bastard, and why he had the "Marrackville Mauler" nickname, he swarmed guys and mauled them. Most people that fought Azumah Nelson didn't have a happy story to tell afterwards, Azumah Nelson was a dangerous guy, he had brutal power, a high ring IQ, and was tough as hell, they don't call Nelson "the professor" for nothing, he schooled guys with sheer skills and brutality, Nelson took Wilfredo "bazooka" Gomez out, chopped him down like a tree. Anyway, Fenech went right after Nelson and had no fear whatsoever of Nelson and his brutal reputation, Fenech made Nelson fight his style of fight, Fenech swarmed Nelson with vicious pressure and forced him into the corner numerous times, and that fight really turned into a brutal trench war, just the kind of fight Fenech wanted and thrived in. Fenech bullied Nelson and had his way with him in the trenches. The fight was declared a draw and Fenech got pissed and stormed out the ring, and rightfully so, Fenech won that fight. Fenech was a fearless savage, to go in there and do that to the legendary Azumah Nelson was just unreal, nobody ever did that to Azumah Nelson. About 30 years after that fight, the WBC went back and reviewed it and declared that Jeff Fenech was robbed and they reversed the decision and awarded the fight and the super featherweight title to Jeff Fenech. That fight was that epic.
Australia’s Fenech awarded world title 31 years after controversial draw
Jeff Fenech has been awarded the World Boxing Council’s super-featherweight belt 31 years after being denied the title in a controversial draw against Azumah Nelson.
Australian boxing icon Jeff Fenech has been awarded the World Boxing Council’s super-featherweight belt 31 years after being denied the title in a controversial draw against Azumah Nelson.
A panel of WBC judges reassessed the June 28, 1991 fight at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas which lasted 12 rounds and resulted in Nelson keeping his belt. That decision was widely criticised by boxing pundits and Fenech later said he was never the same fighter after it.
“This time it was a UD (unanimous decision) for ‘The Marrackville Mauler.’ That makes a grand total of four WBC belts for him,” the WBC said in a statement on the reassessment.
One of his country’s greatest boxers, Fenech held the IBF bantamweight title from 1985 to 1987, the WBC super-bantamweight title from 1987 to 1988 and the WBC featherweight title from 1988 to 1990. “It would’ve meant more to me back when I really won the fight. But for them, the WBC, to do this is so special,” Fenech, 58, told News Corp media.
“Far out, it means so much to me.”
Prior to Nelson, Fenech had won 25 straight fights. He and Ghanaian Nelson had a rematch in Melbourne a year later, with the Australian knocked out in the eighth round in front of a huge crowd at Princes Park.
The pair reunited for another bout in Melbourne in 2008 when they were both middle aged, which Fenech won by majority decision.
Man Jeff Fenech was one tough son of a gun, he struggled with brittle hands his entire career, but despite that he made one heck of a name for himself. He wasn't known as a hard puncher, he broke you down with his relentless pressure, work rate, and volume punching. Here's a no holds barred interview with the man himself. He's one of my favorites because he really represents what this sport is about, you have to be brutal to make it in this sport, and though he wasn't the most skilled, he just brutalized guys and broke them down.
The People’s Champion: Jeff Fenech Salutes His Fans
“Nobody ever beat me when I was a world champion. I moved up [in weight division] each time undefeated. I lost fights, but never for any of my titles. I’ve had five hand operations, pins put in my hands, wedges of bones cut out of my hand so I could make a full fist, because pretty much for every fight I had broken hands.”
Hall-of-Famer Jeff Fenech campaigned in five weight divisions, was a successful three-weight world champion, and beat some of the most recognized names in boxing. He accomplished all of this in thirty-three professional fights. Sydney’s most celebrated sportsman tells us how and why he first decided to become a boxer, which wasn’t his sport of choice. “I played [Aussie rules] football all of my life and wanted to be a rugby league player. Then, when I was about seventeen and a half, I went to a youth club, not to learn to box but to see some guys we wanted to fight with. We searched this youth club, and they weren’t there and the last room we looked in had a sign which said ‘Boxing’ on it. Then I looked through the little window on the door. There was a friend of mine I went to school with who used to box, and we went in and saw him train. I then heard the trainer say they wanted someone to box him. Even though he was a few kilos heavier, I volunteered to fight him.”
“Next day, I went there and I boxed and it wasn’t the best experience. I got winded and beaten up a bit. But the trainer at the end of the session said, ‘Have you boxed before?’ I said ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Are you sure? You did really good. You should come back.’ At the start, I thought he was just bullshitting me to get me back there. In my mind, I didn’t want to go back because it’s not the best feeling when you’re not used to being hit in the stomach and being punched in the face. Anyway, I ended up convincing myself to go back and then a few months later, I was state champion, then six months later, national champion. I think we all have a hidden talent and I kind of found it, totally accidentally.”
Fenech’s amateur pedigree is often overshadowed by his successes in the professional arena. “People don’t know a lot about my career. Even though I only had twenty-six amateur fights, I won the Oceanic flyweight title in 1983, then shortly after went to the World Championships in Rome and got the bronze. Then in 1984 I went to the same Los Angeles Olympics as Evander Holyfield and all those guys.”
Fenech turned professional on October 12, 1984, and, barely four months later, “The Marrickville Mauler” became New South Wales State bantamweight champion. On April 26, 1995, with a record of six wins, all by knockout, he challenged defending IBF world bantamweight champion Satoshi Shingaki for his crown. Fenech recalled the moment. “I actually got the call couple a couple of months earlier, but he [Shingaki] got injured and pulled out. Then when it was all good to go, everyone was saying, ‘He’s never fought fifteen rounds. He won’t beat Shingaki,’ and all that. I trained harder than anybody ever. I could run ten kilometers in thirty and a half minutes. I did twelve and fifteen rounds of sparring a hundred times in the gym prior to the fight. I had three sparring partners in the ring at the same time. One minute each, so they could stay in the ring, and I’d get pushed to the limit.
“Jeff Harding [former WBC light-heavyweight world champion] was one of them. Another was a guy called Alan McNamara [another light-heavyweight] who was world-rated and was my main sparring partner. I always sparred big guys, including heavyweight Justin Fortune.”
Fenech stopped Shingaki in the ninth to claim his first world honors. But how did the newly-crowned champion deal with all the fame and adulation at the age of twenty? “From seventeen to twenty years old, I’d been all around the world boxing as an amateur and been at the Olympic games. I was the first Olympian from 1984 to win a world title and did so within 196 days from turning professional. It was crazy.
“I was one of those guys who used to say that fame and fortune would never change me, but it changes everybody. As much as you want to deny it and pretend you’re still the same person, it automatically changes you. I remember one day, I walked into the gym, I was in training for my rematch with Shingaki and my trainer, Johnny Lewis, said, ‘You see the door you walked through to get in here?’ I replied, ‘Yes, Johnny,’ and he said, ‘Well, turn around and get the fuck out of here.’ Those were his exact words. I’ll never forget that. He noticed the change in my attitude, not only boxing but a lot of other things. What he said refocused me. I had tears in my eyes. I apologized and made the changes I needed to, for a little while at least.
“Not long after, one of my very close friends had died. He left me $20,000 [Australian dollars]. Now, remember, I got paid $20,000 to fight for the world title, which isn’t a lot, but back then, for somebody who came from the street and never had a dollar, unless I stole something, that was a lot of cash. I remember saying to a friend of mine after winning the world title, ‘Wow. If I could get another $20,000, I’ll retire. I’ll be rich.’ I had no understanding of money and what I’d achieved. When I first started in boxing, the media used to criticize me for ‘Errming’ before giving an answer and all of a sudden I’m doing TV commercials. It was crazy.”
Over the next year, Fenech fought six times, including a second stoppage win over Shingaki, and a lopsided decision over unbeaten American Jerome Coffee [26-0 at the time] over the full fifteen championship rounds, to retain his IBF crown. His first fight of 1986, on April 11, was against ring legend Daniel Zaragoza. Fenech discussed the unenviable task. “The fight wasn’t sanctioned. What happened was, I was waiting to fight again, and he’d just lost his title [against Miguel ‘Happy’ Lora]. The media was saying that this would be a great fight for me because Zaragoza was finished and his career was over, but it would be a good scalp.
“Although I did come out victorious, over the next ten years he beat another twenty-seven opponents, including Paul Banke, Wayne McCullough, you name it. He was a great, great fighter, and even though I won every round, he was my toughest fight to date at that point, without a doubt.”
Three months after Zaragoza, Fenech, now 13-0 with eleven stoppages, took on unbeaten Steve McCrory (younger brother of former welterweight world champion, Milton). “I had a lot of pressure on me for this one because it was billed as ‘Olympic Revenge.’ Although we didn’t fight each other in the Olympics, he was gold medalist in 1984, and I got robbed [against silver medalist Redzep Redzepovski of Yugoslavia]. About two weeks prior to the fight, I broke my hand. I got it x-rayed, spoke to the promoter, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll cancel the fight and reschedule it.’ He said he’d announce that the day after I wouldn’t be fighting. So, I went and had some food, as I was starving.
“Then I receive a call in the morning. ‘Listen, Jeff. I’ve done the maths, and if you don’t fight, I’m going to be bankrupt.’ I replied, ‘I went out and put on nine pounds last night.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll put you on a health farm. I spent a week there on the farm, then two days before the fight I moved back into my house, and I was still about six pounds overweight. My promoter said, ‘Just get as close as you can to the weight, and we’ll relinquish the title on the scales. Just try to win the fight.’ I thought, ‘Okay,’ but I woke up that morning and ran 5K because I was still three pounds over. I’d starved myself for a couple of days, hadn’t drunk any water, but even after that run, I’d only lost a pound. I put the heaters on in the house and sat by one of them, but nothing came off. So I ran another 5K. Still a pound and a bit over. So I did another 5K. Then I collapsed. That’s 15K on the day of the fight. Remember, the weigh-in wasn’t twenty-four hours before back then; it was on the same day. We weighed in on the afternoon. My mum’s over at the house crying because I don’t feel good and my face was all drawn in.
“Despite everything, I made weight and I ended up stopping him in the fourteenth round of a tough fight. Under the circumstances, fighting with a broken hand and running 15K the morning of the fight, I did well to get through. Yeah, I lost a bit of energy, but I never lost my willpower to pull through that night.”
After the fight, Fenech had a hand operation, then, nine months later, he beat Tony Miller to pick up the Australian featherweight title. A month later, he took on the unbeaten, defending WBC world super-bantamweight champion, Samart Payakaroon, knocking him out in four rounds to become a two-weight world champion. The affable Aussie recalled the shoot-out with the tough Thai. “I knew he was a very good puncher. He’d knocked out Lupe Pintor and Juan Meza, two of the toughest Mexicans ever. Payakaroon came with a very tough reputation. When he came to Australia, everyone bet massive amounts on him to knock me out, but that was money lost for them. For me, it was one of my five-star performances. I kept the pressure on him and stayed close. I knocked him out so badly he had to spend the night in hospital. Usually, I wasn’t a one punch knockout artist, but that night, I fought one of my great fights.”
Fenech defended the world title twice against top opposition in Greg Richardson and ring legend Carlos Zarate [who at that point had only lost twice in sixty-eight fights]. “In his comeback, Zarate had won eleven fights in a row, ten inside the distance. He’d knocked out the number-one contender in the world, the American, Richard Savage. I knew that I had to be precise, keep my hands up high, not let him hit me, but put the pressure on. I wanted to give him something he’d never experienced before, so I really turned it up as much as I could. Whenever I see him today, God love him, he always says, ‘You could have fought in any era and beaten any champion. Nobody could have touched you.’ Coming from Carlos Zarate, that’s always special to hear.”
Five months later, Fenech took on Puerto Rican Victor Callejas for the vacant WBC world featherweight title, stopping him in the tenth round to become a three-weight world champion in a little under three years and five months of his debut. Fenech recalled: “Victor could punch. He hit me in the first round with a shot that nearly knocked me out. He struck me with an uppercut, and my hands dropped to my side and my equilibrium went for a few seconds. He was probably the dirtiest fighter I’ve ever fought, but the toughest. I respected him totally and thought he was a great fighter. I broke my right hand and I used my left hand for 75 percent of the fight. If I had my right hand, I have no doubt it wouldn’t have gone five rounds.”
Fenech defended his latest world title a further three further times over the next thirteen months, then took off the whole of 1990 due to two hand operations. After a tune-up fight against John Kalbhenn on January 19, 1991, Fenech took on “The Professor” and fellow Hall of Famer, the legendary Azumah Nelson, on June 28, 1991, putting his WBC world featherweight crown on the line.
After twelve hard-fought rounds, Fenech had to accept a contentious draw. “I wasn’t one of these fighters who trash-talked before fights. I let my fists do the talking. I’ve watched the tape ten million times, and it’s never more than three rounds to him in that fight. The only reason I admired him so much is because he came to my backyard for the rematch.”
The rematch occurred nine months later and was named The Ring magazine’s “Upset of the Year.” It was also Fenech’s first loss as a professional. “From my side, we just thought it was routine and that I was going to win. He went home, trained hard, and wanted to beat me badly. Whereas I came home, trained, messed about with women, out signing autographs, doing daily appearances. I was certain I was going to win and just didn’t prepare like he did and, on the night, I got a shock. He trained hard, worked twice as hard as I did, and knocked me out.”
Over a year later, on June 7, 1993, Fenech suffered defeat at the hands of American Calvin Grove, getting stopped in seven rounds. “I had another hand operation,” he recalled, “but it was like I had a realization after the last fight [against Nelson]. There came a time where I’d never been hurt in my life in my fights, but then I got knocked down against Nelson, and even when I was sparring for the Grove fight, I started to feel the punches, which I’d never had before. I sparred big guys and never felt it. But after all the years, that’s what happens. It all adds up.
“Emanuel Steward, the greatest trainer in the world by far, who trained me towards the end of my career, said, ‘Jeff, why would they make you fight Calvin Grove? He’s one of those quick guys who is awkward and speedy, and this is your first fight back in fifteen months. The people who looked after me really didn’t know much about the sport like Manny did. Then when I fought Calvin, I thought, ‘Wow. This guy hurt me like I’d never been hurt before. My mentality was, ‘I’ll get back in the office and everything is going to be okay. Once I get in that ring, everything will be fine.’ But in boxing, nothing disappears. All I can say is that on the night, somebody better beat me, and I give Grove all the credit for it.”
Fenech continued. “I retired after that fight, but then I got that boxing bug. That little thing that calls you back in. It’s hard to stay away. I’d never done anything apart from box as a profession, so I craved it all. The notoriety, the success, the action, and when people pat you on the back. I went for it again.”
After almost two and a half years out, Fenech had a pair of tune-up fights before taking on unbeaten 27-0 defending champion Phillip Holiday for his IBF world lightweight crown. He was stopped in the second round. This was to prove his third and final defeat.
Six years later, in 2002, Fenech got the call all fighters wait for. “It was my first year of eligibility for the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and I got in on my first go, which I was delighted about. People sometimes wait twenty years to get in. Being inducted means more than any of my world titles. When you get recognition from your peers who have made it within the sport, that’s when you know you’ve made it. That’s the ultimate accolade.”
After retirement, Fenech didn’t stray far from boxing, training several fighters, including Danny Green. However, it was his time tutoring Mike Tyson that generated the most media attention. “For years, I’d been doing stuff with Mike. Going on runs, doing pads. I was always the guy in the background. What people don’t realize is, when he fought Clifford Etienne [February 22, 2003], I trained him for the whole fight. I’d trained him for the full eight weeks. Lived with him and did everything together, then about two or three days before the fight he walks in with this big tattoo all over his face. I didn’t think they were going to let him fight with a fresh tattoo, so I jumped on a plane and went home. I was obviously very disappointed with him.”
Fenech was in Iron Mike’s corner for his last contest against Kevin McBride on June 11, 2005. “I pulled Mike out [retired in the sixth round]. First and foremost, he’s my friend. A great friend, in fact. I promised Mike’s family that I wouldn’t let him get hurt. That’s my job. I could see he didn’t have what it takes. I could see it in his eyes that he didn’t want to be in there, so I got in the ring and stopped the fight.”
But where did Fenech see a peak Tyson among the all-time heavyweight greats? “A fit Mike Tyson? Look toward the end of his career. All those guys were hitting him with no problem, whereas in his prime, his speed was just amazing. They would have never hit him. Then throw in that speed with his power, and he was devastating. He could have been the greatest of all time, ever. At his peak, I don’t think there’s anybody that could beat him.”
Twelve years after hanging up the gloves, Fenech was back in the ring to complete the trilogy with Nelson. However, the fight was never planned as many believed. “I don’t even look at that as a fight. I was in Thailand and somebody said to me, ‘Why don’t we put on a rematch between you and Samart Payakaroon?’ I said, ‘Let’s do it!’ I’d organized all this stuff and thought, ‘This is going to be great.’ Then all of a sudden, as we’re close to sorting a deal, he rings up and says, ‘Listen, Samart’s asking for silly money, so we can’t do it.’ So he approached Azumah Nelson and asked if he’d take the fight and he said, ‘Yes.’ Listen, we both trained hard and it was a great fight, but I don’t take credit for beating Azumah Nelson in that fight. I was forty-four and he was forty-nine. We put on a good show, and that was it.” Fenech added. “I don’t talk to him [Nelson] all the time, but I rate him as one of the greatest fighters in the sport. To be able to come back the way he did, represent his country, he’s an amazing human being. It was great sharing a ring with him.”
Fenech signed off with a nostalgic grudge and an endearing homage to his fans. “I have billions of regrets in boxing. Trainers, promoters, they robbed me, lied to me and deceived me. When I look back and evaluate, it’s a sad story. When you work hard, I think you deserve to get paid what you’re worth, and I didn’t. Guys fighting on my undercards were earning bigger money than me. I would have loved to have fought more in the US, but that’s been and gone now.”
“But listen, one thing I will always be grateful for is the boxing fans. If it wasn’t for the public, Australia, the people who paid to watch me fight, I’d be nobody. My time will always be 110 percent to the normal person. I’m no different to other guys. If there’s five people asking for an autograph, I’ll sign five. If there’s a hundred thousand, I’ll make sure I sign each and every last one. Without those people, I’d be a nobody and have nothing. I’ll always be grateful for them. Thank you.”
Jeff Fenech forcing Azumah Nelson into the corner during their first encounter, this is where a lot of the fight was spent, Fenech forced Nelson into the corner and they really went to war and Fenech got the best of the exchanges. Fenech had Nelson right where he wanted him. It was the damnest thing I've ever seen, it took some balls to pull off this strategy, Azumah Nelson was a dangerous guy and Fenech slipped quite a few lethal punches from Nelson and just kept pounding away at Nelson. But that was Jeff Fenech's style, he liked it down in the trenches, I didn't think he would be able to control Nelson and force him into a fight like that but he did and he had his way with Nelson. To do that to a dangerous guy like Nelson is one of the craziest things I've ever seen in this sport.
Make no mistake about it, Azumah Nelson was dangerous, he took a lot of guys out. They called him "the professor" and the "the terrible warrior."
Anyway, Jeff Fenech was one of my favorite fighters of all-time, I wish there were more like him these days, nothing cute about his style, he was just gonna brutalized you.
The legendary Jeff Fenech, "the Marrackville Mauler."
Jeff Fenech in his prime.