Teofilo Stevenson vs. Muhammad Ali: The Greatest Fight That Never Was

Published

12 years ago

July 19, 2012

What do you make of the man who turned down millions upon millions of dollars, and the chance to see if he was better than The Greatest?

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 an unbelievable 11 years without a loss. Had Cuba not boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics, many think Stevenson would have won an unmatched four gold medals in boxing. Stevenson had already flattened the eventual 1984 gold medalist Tyrell Biggs twice.

An offer to fight Muhammad Ali came after Stevenson won his second Olympic gold in Montreal in 1976. Stevenson was at his peak. The world had never seen a heavyweight with the tools Stevenson brought into the ring. He was bigger (6'5″, 220 pounds) and deadlier than George Foreman, yet boxed with effortless grace and intelligence. Prior to Montreal, Stevenson had demolished every opponent that stood before him, relying on one of the most lethal right hands ever seen in boxing.

American promoters offered him five million dollars to turn pro and challenge Muhummad Ali. He refused.

He said of the offer, “What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?”

Stevenson died at the age of 60 in Havana on June 11.

* * *

I traveled to Cuba with the intention of speaking with boxers who had turned down enormous offers to leave. When explaining my project to people, again and again I was met with amusement and skepticism. I heard the same sentiment repeated everywhere I looked for fighters: “Something must be wrong with you. The only journalists who come here for a story are looking at why we leave.”

Which makes sense. That very common journalistic approach argues against Cuba's values and attempts to undermine them. But I wasn't interested in that side of the story. Anyone can see why an elite athlete would want to leave a small, impoverished country where their skills were effectively uncashed winning lottery tickets. All they had to do was wash ashore almost anywhere else in the world and cash in. Yet the vast majority of Cuban boxers—and Cuban athletes in general—despite that incentive, stayed.

Was the decision to stay in Cuba honest? Could anyone, let alone an Olympic champion, turn down that much money without being either brainwashed or afraid for their lives or the lives of loved ones if they defected? I wanted to speak to the people themselves who had faced down that decision and lived with the consequences.

When I interviewed Teófilo Stevenson in his modest house—often reported as a mansion that Fidel Castro gave him—in a leafy Havana neighborhood, I asked him why he stayed.

“If people cannot understand how someone can turn down millions of dollars for a matter of principle, who seems brainwashed to you?”

“Forget the money then. As a competitor, don't you wish you ever had a chance to fight the best from your time?”

Stevenson pointed to a portrait of himself and Ali on his wall from Ali's 1998 humanitarian visit to the island.

“You mean my brother?”

The physical similarity between Ali and Stevenson is downright spooky.

“Don't you wish you'd had a chance to fight Ali?” I asked.

“How could I fight my brother?” he smiled, signaling for me to turn off the cameras so he could have a cigarette break.

When I interviewed Teófilo Stevenson in his modest house—often reported as a mansion that Fidel Castro gave him—in a leafy Havana neighborhood, I asked him why he stayed.

“If people cannot understand how someone can turn down millions of dollars for a matter of principle, who seems brainwashed to you?”

“Forget the money then. As a competitor, don't you wish you ever had a chance to fight the best from your time?”

Stevenson pointed to a portrait of himself and Ali on his wall from Ali's 1998 humanitarian visit to the island.

“You mean my brother?”

The physical similarity between Ali and Stevenson is downright spooky.

“Don't you wish you'd had a chance to fight Ali?” I asked.

“How could I fight my brother?” he smiled, signaling for me to turn off the cameras so he could have a cigarette break.

In the trailer ofmy filmSplit Decision, which profiles boxers like Stevenson who stayed, and some who left Cuba, I used a famous photo of a young Muhammad Ali sitting on a million dollars inside a bank vault, and another of Mike Tyson spreading out enormous amounts of cash inside his hands at a Don King-helmed press conference. The Cuban counterparts of those fighters, Teófilo Stevenson and Felix Savon, were being offered those same stacks of money.

But these men chose to become boxers before the money was spread out before their eyes. Their desire to fight goes deeper.

I interviewed Mike Tyson for my film. I asked him about a time early in his career when he had tearfully told a reporter that he missed fighting “when it wasn't just all about money.”

I asked Tyson what it was that he was fighting for before it was money.

“My mother was dead before I was 16. I'm the son of a pimp and an alcoholic. But if I ever brought anything home of value into my mother's house, she knew I'd stolen it. I never saw her proud of me in my entire life. Not once. And somewhere, somewhere I always had that in my mind. I was fighting to make this woman who caused me more pain than anyone in my life… ” Tyson cleared his throat and wiped his face a couple times. “Deep down I was always fighting to make this woman… I wanted to make this woman proud of me. That's what I was always fighting for.”

So how much is that worth?

* * *

Muhammad Ali, a man adept at finding weakness in his opponents and cruelly exploiting it to his own advantage, never saw weakness in Teófilo Stevenson's stand against turning professional and facing him. He never saw weakness in a boxer rejecting millions because of something he believed in.

Instead, in visits in 1996 and 1998, Ali donated over $1.7 million worth of medical aid to Cuba as a way of opposing the economic embargo against the island nation and to help alleviate the brutal economic crisis of that decade. Teófilo Stevenson was there to greet Muhammad Ali at Havana's international airport when the former champ arrived. They were inseparable during Ali's visit.

* * *

In 1977, the year Stevenson turned down the money, Muhammad Ali was fresh off winning decisions over the likes of Ken Norton, Alfredo Evangelista, and Earnie Shavers. The following year, he would be defeated by lightly regarded Leon Spinks.

Ali would be 35 years old, with his skills rapidly in decline, at the time Stevenson would have challenged him for the heavyweight title.

By contrast, Teófilo Steveson was 25 years old, at the height of his powers. Stevenson could have quickly dominated the heavyweight division had he turned professional. Given Stevenson's poise, size, and ability, it's hard to imagine favoring any pro heavyweight of the era against what Stevenson brought into the ring.

To look at photographs of Stevenson post Montreal is to look at a modern, massive heavyweight transported back in time. He has the height and physique of a Lennox Lewis with the footwork of someone several weight classes beneath him. Boxing had never seen anything like Stevenson, entering the ring with an elegant leg rising over the top rope. Perhaps even more lethal than the power in his right hand was the speed with which he could deliver it. Had Ali fought the Cuban, a fading but crafty champ would have met a new kind of heavyweight at the peak of his powers. Ali would have brought all the experience and punishment he'd earned in wars against Norton, Frazier, Chuvalo, Terrell, and Foreman. Where could Ali look to solve Stevenson in the ring? What did he have left in his tank to use against a force like Cuba's greatest champion?

Inevitably, Ali vs Stevenson would have served as a symbolic battle between the United States and Cuba, capitalism and communism, Castro's values instilled in his boxers pitted against the values of “merchandise” boxers from the rest of the world. Sport is to war as porn is to sex. We all need our proxies. Nothing cemented Castro's argument against the US more forcefully than when his boxers rejected money to sellout their country; their loyalty was even better than beating Americans in the ring. But the weight of that loyalty is telling even when the boxers take the money. With Cuban boxers leaving in record numbers, we get a new look into the system and its failures to keep fighters.

S.L. Price, author and senior writer at Sports Illustrated, once said that while Cuba might be the worst place in the world for an athlete, it might also be the best place in the world for a spectator.

I asked Stevenson and several of the other boxers still on the island, all with their careers behind them, if they had regrets about any decision they'd made.

Stevenson gave me a hard look. A silence spread out between us while he glared.

Stevenson had only agreed to be interviewed provided that I pay him (and not the state) for the privilege. It's an odd feeling paying $150 to someone to find out their reasons for turning down tens of millions. You can choose between the gestures of taking a little money or turning down a lot, and say one defines Stevenson, but I'm more inclined to say it defines you.

Sitting there interviewing one of the most famous men in a country I wasn't allowed to be in, trying to have an honest conversation with him about his life, I had no hope of getting an answer from Stevenson that said more about him and the place he came from than what my questions said about me and where I came from.

Stevenson was a heavy smoker late in life, but he pleaded that I not film him while smoking—he didn't want children to see him engaged in a bad habit. I agreed to not film, but mildly resented that he considered his smoking breaks to count against our agreed 75 minutes of interview time.

“Don't let the children see the champ smoking. I know for a journalist this is just the kind of thing you love to show about someone like me, but it does harm for others. I am not proud of this. It is not me being seen as a hypocrite that worries me. Just that kids would do something so stupid as this.”

I offered him one of my cigarettes.

“What is this?” he asked suspiciously.

“American Spirit.”

“You want Teófilo Stevenson to smoke American Spirit? Why did I ever let you into my house?”

* * *

I interviewed Stevenson in the early morning, but he was already noticeably intoxicated. He drank vodka from a water bottle for the duration of our conversation and toyed with my translator mixing up his Spanish with remarkably strange and amusing segues into Russian and English. He returned again and again to Michael Jackson as a subject of fascination.

At 59, he was still an imposing physical presence. When he locked the gate behind us with a padlock just before we stepped inside his house, I felt fear. Many Habaneros had mentioned scaling his fence to escape Stevenson and his antics when drunk. There were rumors he had a pistol on the premises, given to him as a gift from Fidel.

* * *

“Do I look like I regret any decision I've made?” Stevenson asked me.

I shrugged.

He took a long drink from his bottle and smiled. The translator I'd hired, a close personal friend of Stevenson's, gave me a hard look of his own. There was a great deal of reluctance on his part to reveal this side of his friend to the world.

“My friend,” Stevenson began, clearing his throat unsuccessfully, “I have no regrets. I am the happiest man in the world. And our time is up. I hope you got what you were looking for.”

Brin-Jonathan Butler is the director of the forthcoming documentarySplit Decision (rigondeaux.com), a documentaryexploring Cuban and American life through the lens of elite Cuban boxers faced with accepting or rejecting million dollar offers to abandon their country and step into a smuggler’s boat in the hopes of chasing the American Dream.

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Lucas Bahdi Forged the TSS 2024 Knockout of the Year

Published

13 hours ago

December 23, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Lucas-Bahdi-Forged-he-RSS-2024-Knockout-of-the-Year

A Knockout of the Year doesn’t have to be a one-punch knockout, but it must arrive with the suddenness of a thunderclap on a clear day and the punch or punches must be so harsh as to obviate the need for a “10-count.” And, if rendered by an underdog, that makes the KO resonate more loudly.

Within these parameters, Lucas Bahdi’s knockout of Ashton “H2O” Sylva still jumped off the page. The thunderclap happened on July 20 in Tampa, Florida, on a show promoted by Jake Paul with Paul and the great Amanda Serrano sharing the bill against soft opponents in the featured bouts.

The 30-year-old Bahdi (16-0, 14 KOs) and the 20-year-old Sylva (11-0, 9 KOs) were both undefeated, but Bahdi was accorded scant chance of defeating Jake Paul’s house fighter.

Sylva was 18 years old and had seven pro fights under his belt, winning all inside the distance, when he signed with Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions, in 2022. “We believe that Ashton has that talent, that flashiness, that style, that knockout power, that charisma to really be a massive, massive, superstar…” said the “Problem Child” when announcing that Sylva had signed with his company.

Jake Paul was so confident that his protege would accomplish big things that he matched Sylva with Floyd “Kid Austin” Schofield. Currently 18-0 and ranked #2 by the WBA, Schofield was further along than Sylva in the pantheon of hot lightweight prospects. But Schofield backed out, alleging an injury, opening the door to a substitute.

Enter Lucas Bahdi who despite his eye-catching record was a virtual unknown. This would be his first outing on U.S. soil. All of his previous bouts were staged in Mexico or in Canada, mostly in his native Ontario province. “My opponent may have changed,” said Sylva who hails from Long Beach, California, “but the result will be the same, I will get the W and continue my path to greatness.”

The first five rounds were all Sylva. The Canadian had no antidote for Sylva’s speed and quickness. He was outclassed.

Then, in round six, it all came unglued for the precocious California. Out of the blue, Bahdi stiffened him with a hard right hand. Another right quickly followed, knocking Sylva unconscious. A third punch, a sweeping left, was superfluous. Jake Paul’s phenom was already out cold.

Sylva landed face-first on the canvas. He lay still as his handlers and medics rushed to his aid. It was scarifying. “May God restore him,” said ring announcer Joe Martinez as he was being stretchered out of the ring.

The good news is that Ashton “H2O” Silva will be able to resume his career. He is expected back in the ring as early as February. As for Lucas Bahdi, architect of the Knockout of the Year, he has added one more win to his ledger, winning a 10-round decision on the undercard of the Paul vs Tyson spectacle, and we will presumably be hearing a lot more about him.

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Usyk Outpoints Fury and Itauma has the “Wow Factor” in Riyadh

Published

2 days ago

December 21, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Usyk Outpoints Fury and Itauma has the “Wow Factor” in Riyadh

Oleksandr Usyk left no doubt that he is the best heavyweight of his generation and one of the greatest boxers of all time with a unanimous decision over Tyson Fury tonight at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But although the Ukrainian won eight rounds on all three scorecards, this was no runaway. To pirate a line from one of the DAZN talking heads, Fury had his moments in every round but Usyk had more moments.

The early rounds were fought at a faster pace than the first meeting back in May. At the mid-point, the fight was even. The next three rounds – the next five to some observers – were all Usyk who threw more punches and landed the cleaner shots.

Fury won the final round in the eyes of this reporter scoring at home, but by then he needed a knockout to pull the match out of the fire.

The last round was an outstanding climax to an entertaining chess match during which both fighters took turns being the pursuer and the pursued.

An Olympic gold medalist and a unified world champion at cruiserweight and heavyweight, the amazing Usyk improved his ledger to 23-0 (14). His next fight, more than likely, will come against the winner of the Feb. 22 match in Ridayh between Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker which will share the bill with the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.

Fury (34-2-1) may fight Anthony Joshua next. Regardless, no one wants a piece of Moses Itauma right now although the kid is only 19 years old.

Moses Itauma

Raised in London by a Nigerian father and a Slovakian mother, Itauma turned heads once again with another “wow” performance. None of his last seven opponents lasted beyond the second round.

His opponent tonight, 34-year-old Australian Demsey McKean, lasted less than two minutes. Itauma, a southpaw with blazing fast hands, had the Aussie on the deck twice during the 117-second skirmish. The first knockdown was the result of a cuffing punch that landed high on the head; the second knockdown was produced by an overhand left. McKean went down hard as his chief cornerman bounded on to the ring apron to halt the massacre.

Photo (c): Mark Robinson

Itauma (12-0, 10 KOs after going 20-0 as an amateur) is the real deal. It was the second straight loss for McKean (22-2) who lasted into the 10^th round against Filip Hrgovic in his last start.

Bohachuk-Davis

In a fight billed as the co-main although it preceded Itauma-McKean, Serhii Bohachuk, an LA-based Ukrainian, stopped Ishmael Davis whose corner pulled him out after six frames.

Both fighters were coming off a loss in fights that were close on the scorecards, Bohachuk falling to Vergil Ortiz Jr in a Las Vegas barnburner and Davis losing to Josh Kelly.

Davis, who took the fight on short notice, subbing for Ismail Madrimov, declined to 13-2. He landed a few good shots but was on the canvas in the second round, compliments of a short left hook, and the relentless Bohachuk (25-2, 24 KOs) eventually wore him down.

Fisher-Allen

In a messy, 10-round bar brawl masquerading as a boxing match, Johnny Fisher, the Romford Bull, won a split decision over British countryman David Allen. Two judges favored Fisher by 95-94 tallies with the dissenter favoring Allen 96-93. When the scores were announced, there was a chorus of boos and those watching at home were outraged.

Allen was a step up in class for Fisher. The Doncaster man had a decent record (23-5-2 heading in) and had been routinely matched tough (his former opponents included Dillian Whyte, Luis “King Kong” Ortiz and three former Olympians). But Allen was fairly considered no more than a journeyman and Fisher (12-0 with 11 KOs, eight in the opening round) was a huge favorite.

In round five, Allen had Fisher on the canvas twice although only one was ruled a true knockdown. From that point, he landed the harder shots and, at the final bell, he fell to canvas shedding tears of joy, convinced that he had won.

He did not win, but he exposed Johnny Fisher as a fighter too slow to compete with elite heavyweights, a British version of the ponderous Russian-Canadian campaigner Arslanbek Makhmudov.

Other Bouts of Note

In a spirited 10-round featherweight match, Scotland’s Lee McGregor, a former European bantamweight champion and stablemate of former unified 140-pound title-holder Josh Taylor, advanced to 15-1-1 (11) with a unanimous decision over Isaac Lowe (25-3-3). The judges had it 96-92 and 97-91 twice.

A cousin and regular houseguest of Tyson Fury, Lowe fought most of the fight with cuts around both eyes and was twice deducted a point for losing his gumshield.

In a fight between super featherweights that could have gone either way, Liverpool southpaw Peter McGrail improved to 11-1 (6) with a 10-round unanimous decision over late sub Rhys Edwards. The judges had it 96-95 and 96-94 twice.

McGrail, a Tokyo Olympian and 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medalist, fought from the third round on with a cut above his right eye, the result of an accidental clash of heads. It was the first loss for Edwards (16-1), a 24-year-old Welshman who has another fight booked in three weeks.

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Fury-Usyk Reignited: Can the Gypsy King Avenge his Lone Defeat?

Published

4 days ago

December 20, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Fury-Usyk Reignited: Can the Gypsy King Avenge his Lone Defeat?

In professional boxing, the heavyweight division, going back to the days of John L. Sullivan, is the straw that stirs the drink. By this measure, the fight on May 18 of this year at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was the biggest prizefight in decades. The winner would emerge as the first undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999 when Lennox Lewis out-pointed Evander Holyfield in their second meeting.

The match did not disappoint. It had several twists and turns.

Usyk did well in the early rounds, but the Gypsy King rattled Usyk with a harsh right hand in the fifth stanza and won rounds five through seven on all three cards. In the ninth, the match turned sharply in favor of the Ukrainian. Fury was saved by the bell after taking a barrage of unanswered punches, the last of which dictated a standing 8-count from referee Mark Nelson. But Fury weathered the storm and with his amazing powers of recuperation had a shade the best of it in the final stanza.

The decision was split: 115-112 and 114-113 for Usyk who became a unified champion in a second weight class; 114-113 for Fury.

That brings us to tomorrow (Saturday, Dec. 21) where Usyk and Fury will renew acquaintances in the same ring where they had their May 18 showdown.

The first fight was a near “pick-‘em” affair with Fury closing a very short favorite at most of the major bookmaking establishments. The Gypsy King would have been a somewhat higher favorite if not for the fact that he was coming off a poor showing against MMA star Francis Ngannou and had a worrisome propensity for getting cut. (A cut above Fury’s right eye in sparring pushed back the fight from its original Feb. 11 date.)

Tomorrow’s sequel, bearing the tagline “Reignited,” finds Usyk a consensus 7/5 favorite although those odds could shorten by post time. (There was no discernible activity after today’s weigh-in where Fury, fully clothed, topped the scales at 281, an increase of 19 pounds over their first meeting.)

Given the politics of boxing, anything “undisputed” is fragile. In June, Usyk abandoned his IBF belt and the organization anointed Daniel Dubois their heavyweight champion based upon Dubois’s eighth-round stoppage of Filip Hrgovic in a bout billed for the IBF interim title. The malodorous WBA, a festering boil on the backside of boxing, now recognizes 43-year-old Kubrat Pulev as its “regular” heavyweight champion.

Another difference between tomorrow’s fight card and the first installment is that the May 18 affair had a much stronger undercard. Two strong pairings were the rematch between cruiserweights Jai Opetaia and Maris Briedis (Opetaia UD 12) and the heavyweight contest between unbeatens Agit Kabayal and Frank Sanchez (Kabayel KO 7).

Tomorrow’s semi-wind-up between Serhii Bohachuk and Ismail Madrimov lost luster when Madrimov came down with bronchitis and had to withdraw. The featherweight contest between Peter McGrail and Dennis McCann fell out when McCann’s VADA test returned an adverse finding. Bohachuk and McGrail remain on the card but against late-sub opponents in matches that are less intriguing.

The focal points of tomorrow’s undercard are the bouts involving undefeated British heavyweights Moses Itauma (10-0, 8 KOs) and Johnny Fisher (12-0, 11 KOs). Both are heavy favorites over their respective opponents but bear watching because they represent the next generation of heavyweight standouts. Fury and Usyk are getting long in the tooth. The Gypsy King is 36; Usyk turns 38 next month.

Bob Arum once said that nobody purchases a pay-per-view for the undercard and, years from now, no one will remember which sanctioning bodies had their fingers in the pie. So, Fury-Usyk II remains a very big deal, although a wee bit less compelling than their first go-around.

Will Tyson Fury avenge his lone defeat? Turki Alalshikh, the Chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority and the unofficial czar of “major league” boxing, certainly hopes so. His Excellency has made known that he stands poised to manufacture a rubber match if Tyson prevails.

We could have already figured this out, but Alalshikh violated one of the protocols of boxing when he came flat out and said so. He effectively made Tyson Fury the “A-side,” no small potatoes considering that the most relevant variable on the checklist when handicapping a fight is, “Who does the promoter need?”

The Uzyk-Fury II fight card will air on DAZN with a suggested list price of $39.99 for U.S. fight fans. The main event is expected to start about 5:45 pm ET / 2:45 pm PT.

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