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ESPN THE MAGAZINE’S “CUBA ISSUE” STIRS STRONG FEELINGS
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The Feb. 17 issue of ESPN The Magazine, like so many that preceded it, was largely devoted to a particular theme. In this instance, the cover photo, of the Los Angeles Dodgers 23-year-old phenom, right fielder Yasiel Puig, hinted at much of what was inside: a series of articles about Cuba, which the publication proclaimed was the launching point for the “opening (of) the next great pipeline in sports.”
That pipeline has been free-flowing from Cuba to the United States and other countries for many years, predating the Fidel Castro-led revolution that toppled the admittedly corrupt regime of President Fulgencio Batista in 1959, although any use of the word “free” doesn’t come close to describing living conditions in the island nation located just 90 miles south of Key West, Fla. The Soviet Union might have formally dissolved on Dec. 26, 1991, which led to the tearing down of the concrete-and-barbed-wire Berlin Wall and the figurative but no less real “Iron Curtain,” but the “Sugar Cane Curtain” that continues to separate Communist Cuba from the U.S. remains in place. That reality is much to the chagrin of the large Cuban-American population in south Florida and more than a few government dissenters in Cuba’s population 11.3 million, who dream of making it to our shores, or at least of the restoration of the freedoms which are denied them in their homeland.
“Some Americans who have never experienced anything else don’t understand how important freedom is,” said Maria Alejandra Santamaria, a retired educator in Miami who came to America from her native Havana in 1968. “Freedom should never be taken for granted. You have to fight for what you want. You have to earn your happiness, and that only comes through hard work and dedication. It’s not easy; nothing worthwhile ever is. But when you have been through so much to even get to the United States, and to live free, you realize what a precious gift that is.
“There are so many young Cubans who live there now who are as desperate to leave as we were because they know there is something else, something better, than they have grown up under.”
Cubans know there is something better in no small part because of breakout athletes like Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez and Puig, Cuban defectors who finished first and second, respectively, in the voting for the 2013 National League Rookie of the Year Award, and, in their early 20s, already are millionaires. They know something of the repeated attempts by those players, often at the risk of their own lives or of imprisonment, to reach the U.S. They are familiar with the story of WBA and WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux, the two-time Olympic gold medalist (2000 and 2004) who tried on seven different occasions to escape Cuba before he finally reached the U.S. and freedom. In doing so, Rigondeaux – who was incarcerated after one failed defection attempt and was stripped of his national-hero status and his most prized possession, a car – made the gut-wrenching decision to leave behind his wife, 5-year-old son, 15-year-old stepson and seven siblings.
“You are a champion, and it means nothing,” Rigondeaux is quoted in the ESPN piece about him and other Cuban boxers who made it out. “We are like dogs. After all your time is over, you end up telling stories on a street corner about how you used to be a star.”
What is not so widely known are the success stories of Maria Alejandra Santamaria and her husband Jose (known to his many friends and family members as Pepe), who arrived in New York City with little more than the clothes on their backs and, over time, forged new, prosperous lives for themselves and their three children, all of whom were born in the U.S. Including brothers, offspring and in-laws, there are 18 members of the Santamaria clan who live in and around Miami.
“Many Americans believe that what has happened in other countries, including Cuba, can’t happen here,” said Roxana Santamaria, the youngest of Pepe and Maria’s grown children. “That is the danger.”
I know the Santamarias’ saga well, because Pepe is my wife’s first cousin. My beloved Anne is half-Cuban, her late mother, the former Georgina Ortiz, having met and married my future father-in-law, the late J.E. d’Aquin, in 1948 while he was in Havana as an employee of the U.S. government. Anne I met on a blind date as high schoolers in New Orleans in 1965 and we married 3½ years later. Although I am not Cuban – my lineage is a hodgepodge of Spanish, English, French, Irish and Swedish – our four children are part Cuban, as are our five grandchildren. Havana is a city that for many years I have felt connected to, although I have never been there and probably never will. Maybe that is because I have become so immersed in the Cuban culture through our trips to Miami, which sadly are less frequent than I would prefer. When Anne and I are visiting the Santamarias, Maria – better known by her nickname, “Marita” –makes sure I am always well-fortified with café con leche, a particular favorite, and mounds of black beans and plantains. While platters of food are not being passed around the dinner table, tales of what was and hopefully will be again are also exchanged.
“Castro was putting people in concentration camps,” Marita told me of those harrowing days for those who opposed the bearded one’s totalitarian rule. “I didn’t want Pepe to go into a concentration camp. I asked a relative, who used to live here in Miami, to send Pepe money for airfare so he could go to Madrid, Spain. The day before Castro’s people came to arrest him, he left for Madrid. He stayed there for a few months before, with the help of the Catholic Conference, he was able to join me in New York.
“It was terrible being separated. Many Cubans went to one country or another and they never were able to get back together with their families. It was hard for Pepe to make the decision to leave, but it was his only chance to stay out of the concentration camp, where I know that some people died.”
Anne returned with her parents for a brief visit to Havana when she was an infant, and again in 1955 or ’56 (she doesn’t recall the exact year), when she was 6 or 7. What she does recall is the sound of gunfire echoing in the hills when she and her parents went to see her mother’s aunt.
“It was machine guns, I think,” she said. “We knew that there was fighting between Castro’s supporters and Batista’s soldiers in the mountains. I remember being terrified. I think we stayed there for just a day or two before we went back to Havana.
“All my life I’ve wanted to go back there, but after Castro took over we never did, of course. I hope someday, if things are different, I’ll be able to visit again.”
As a sports writer for these past 43 years, and even before, Cuba and Cuban athletes have drifted in and out of my consciousness with surprising regularity. For reasons I still don’t quite understand, one of my favorite pitchers as a kid was Camilo Pascual, the Cuban righthander with the big overhand curveball who performed with distinction for the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins. I also liked the flair with which outfielder Minnie Minoso played both in the field and at the plate, a style which is replicated by the swashbuckling Puig. Then again, a bit of showmanship has always been an integral part of the Cuban approach to sports. What Minoso brought to the diamond the great welterweight champion Kid Gavilan, with his signature “bolo punch,” brought to the boxing ring.
Said Jose Fernandez, the Marlins pitcher, in ESPN The Magazine: “I am who I am. I come from a different place. Baseball in Cuba’s a lot more emotion, a lot more passion. At the end of the day, it’s a game, and you’re supposed to have fun, right?”
I’m not sure if it was fun I was seeking when I requested the assignment from my editors at the Philadelphia Daily News to cover the 11th Pan American Games in Havana, which if nothing else would have given me an opportunity to report back to Anne all that I had seen of the land of her mother’s birth. But much to my regret, a columnist with more pull and seniority, Bill Conlin, got that gig.
I did, however, cover the 10th Pan Am Games in Indianapolis, Ind., in 1987, which produced no shortage of sights and sounds that made clear the wide gap, ideological and otherwise, that existed between Castro’s Cuba and the U.S.
One of the stories I wrote was about the conundrum in which members of PAX-I, Indianapolis’ Pan Am organizing committee, found themselves while trying to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Cuban delegation after an anti-Castro group paid for a private plane to fly over the Pan Am site towing a banner urging Cuban athletes to defect.
Also on the political front, officials of the American Legion, who had agreed to allow the use of their outdoor mall for the closing ceremony, withdrew that consent when it was learned that a central theme would be the honoring of Cuba, which was to be the site of the 1991 Pan Am Games. The venue for the closing ceremony was shifted to the Hoosier Dome, but even that move wasn’t without incident. PAX-I had hired Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, a popular salsa-rock group, to provide entertainment sure to please the glut of Spanish-speaking visitors. But the Cuban delegation reacted to the Miami Sound Machine with the same lack of enthusiasm they might have shown Sylvester Stallone had he paraded through the athletes’ village dressed as Rambo. Cuban Olympic Committee president Manuel Gonzalez Guerra noted that Estefan’s father once was a bodyguard for Batista’s wife. Guerra said the selection of Estefan was a “provocation” of the Cuban delegation and he threatened to boycott the closing ceremony.
The Cubans did, in fact, attend the party, but when Estefan and Miami Sound Machine took the stage, Guerra and his athletes stood up, turned their backs and remained still and silent throughout the show. I have sometimes wondered how many of the protesting Cuban athletes later defected, or tried to.
There was intrigue in competition, too, not the least of which was in boxing. Although the U.S. led the way with 370 total medals and 169 golds, Cuba finished second in both categories, with 175 total medals and 75 golds. Ten of those golds and a bronze went to Cuban boxers, while American fighters were limited to one gold, four silvers and four bronzes.
“Everybody is dwelling on the Cuban thing,” one of the U.S. boxers, future WBA super middleweight champion Frankie Liles, said of the bitter rivalry that was developing in the ring between the two countries. “One of the things that’s in the back (of the American boxers’ minds) is stopping the Cubans – not just beating the Cubans, but stopping them.”
Liles and his teammates came up way short, and four years later, at the Pan Am Games in Havana, the Cubans were still kicking American butt inside the ropes: 11 golds (no silvers or bronzes) to one gold, four silvers and four bronzes for U.S. fighters. It’s little wonder American promoters were so hot to get their hands on some of the more accomplished Cubans.
Then again, not every Cuban superstar, in boxing or baseball, viewed defection as a path to paradise. In 1974, Bob Arum and Don King each tried to entice celebrated heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson, then 22 and the winner of the first of his three Olympic gold medals, to come to America to fight an aging Muhammad Ali. But Stevenson, who was 60 and pretty much broke when he died last year, refused to be swayed. “What is a million dollars,” he reasoned, “compared to the love of eight million Cubans?”
The baseball equivalent of Stevenson, according to Conlin, was Omar Linares, whom Conlin observed at the ’91 Pan Am Games in Havana. “The best third baseman I have seen not named Mike Schmidt,” wrote Big Bill, who also noted that Linares was a “devout Fidelista” who wasn’t going to defect for anything so crass as stacks of U.S. dollars.
All I know is that the Havana I have heard about so often, the one of the Santamarias’ pre-Castro memories, remains an alluring destination for those of us who have ever read a Ernest Hemingway novel. You don’t have to fire up a contraband Cohiba to know something has been lost to Americans who are prohibited from traveling to Cuba, or to realize that even more has been lost to Cubans who haven’t been able to make it to this land of the free.
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Niyomtrong Proves a Bridge Too Far for Alex Winwood in Australia
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Today in Perth, Australia, Alex Winwood stepped up in class in his fifth pro fight with the aim of becoming the fastest world title-holder in Australian boxing history. But Winwood (4-0, 2 KOs heading in) wasn’t ready for WBA strawweight champion Thammanoon Niyomtrong, aka Knockout CP Freshmart, who by some accounts is the longest reigning champion in the sport.
Niyomtrong (25-0, 9 KOs) prevailed by a slim margin to retain his title. “At least the right guy won,” said prominent Australian boxing writer Anthony Cocks who thought the scores (114-112, 114-112, 113-113) gave the hometown fighter all the best of it.
Winwood, who represented Australia in the Tokyo Olympics, trained for the match in Thailand (as do many foreign boxers in his weight class). He is trained by Angelo Hyder who also worked with Danny Green and the Moloney twins. Had he prevailed, he would have broken the record of Australian boxing icon Jeff Fenech who won a world title in his seventh pro fight. A member of the Noongar tribe, Winwood, 27, also hoped to etch on his name on the list of notable Australian aboriginal boxers alongside Dave Sands, Lionel Rose and the Mundines, Tony and Anthony, father and son.
What Winwood, 27, hoped to capitalize on was Niyomtrong’s theoretical ring rust. The Thai was making his first start since July 20 of 2022 when he won a comfortable decision over Wanheng Menayothin in one of the most ballyhooed domestic showdowns in Thai boxing history. But the Noongar needed more edges than that to overcome the Thai who won his first major title in his ninth pro fight with a hard-fought decision over Nicaragua’s Carlos Buitrago who was 27-0-1 heading in.
A former Muai Thai champion, Niyomtrong/Freshmart turns 34 later this month, an advanced age for a boxer in the sport’s smallest weight class. Although he remains undefeated, he may have passed his prime. How good was he in his heyday? Prominent boxing historian Matt McGrain has written that he was the most accomplished strawweight in the world in the decade 2010-2019: “It is not close, it is not debatable, there is no argument.”
Against the intrepid Winwood, Niyomtrong started slowly. In round seven, he cranked up the juice, putting the local fighter down hard with a left hook. He added another knockdown in round nine. The game Winwood stayed the course, but was well-beaten at the finish, no matter that the scorecards suggested otherwise, creating the impression of a very close fight.
P.S. – Because boxrec refused to name this a title fight, it fell under the radar screen until the result was made known. In case you hadn’t noticed, boxrec is at loggerheads with the World Boxing Association and has decided to “de-certify” the oldest of the world sanctioning bodies. While this reporter would be happy to see the WBA disappear – it is clearly the most corrupt of the four major organizations – the view from here is that boxrec is being petty. Moreover, if this practice continues, it will be much harder for boxing historians of future generations to sort through the rubble.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 295: Callum Walsh, Pechanga Casino Fights and More
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Super welterweight contender Callum Walsh worked out for reporters and videographers at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Thursday,
The native of Ireland Walsh (11-0, 9 KOs) has a fight date against Poland’s Przemyslaw Runowski (22-2-1, 6 KOs) on Friday, Sept. 20 at the city of Dublin. It’s a homecoming for the undefeated southpaw from Cork. UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card.
Mark down the date.
Walsh is the latest prodigy of promoter Tom Loeffler who has a history of developing European boxers in America and propelling them forward on the global boxing scene. Think Gennady “Triple G” Golovkin and you know what I mean.
Golovkin was a middleweight monster for years.
From Kevin Kelley to Oba Carr to Vitaly Klitschko to Serhii Bohachuk and many more in-between, the trail of elite boxers promoted by Loeffler continues to grow. Will Walsh be the newest success?
Add to the mix Dana White, the maestro of UFC, who is also involved with Walsh and you get a clearer picture of what the Irish lad brings to the table.
Walsh has speed, power and a glint of meanness that champions need to navigate the prizefighting world. He also has one of the best trainers in the world in Freddie Roach who needs no further introduction.
Perhaps the final measure of Walsh will be when he’s been tested with the most important challenge of all:
Can he take a punch from a big hitter?
That’s the final challenge
It always comes down to the chin. It’s what separates the Golovkins from the rest of the pack. At the top of the food chain they all can hit, have incredible speed and skill, but the fighters with the rock hard chins are those that prevail.
So far, the chin test is the only examination remaining for Walsh.
“King’ Callum Walsh is ready for his Irish homecoming and promises some fireworks for the Irish fans. This will be an entertaining show for the fans and we are excited to bring world class boxing back to the 3Arena in Dublin,” said Loeffler.
Pechanga Fights
MarvNation Promotions presents a battle between welterweight contenders Jose “Chon” Zepeda (37-5, 28 KOs) and Ivan Redkach (24-7-1, 19 KOs) on Friday, Sept. 6, at Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula. DAZN will stream the fight card.
Both have fought many of the best welterweights in the world and now face each other. It should be an interesting clash between the veterans.
Also on the card, featherweights Nathan Rodriguez (15-0) and Bryan Mercado (11-5-1) meet in an eight-round fight.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. First bout at 7 p.m.
Monster Inoue
Once again Japan’s Naoya Inoue dispatched another super bantamweight contender with ease as TJ Doheny was unable to continue in the seventh round after battered by a combination on Tuesday in Tokyo.
Inoue continues to brush away whoever is placed in front of him like a glint of dust.
Is the “Monster” the best fighter pound-for-pound on the planet or is it Terence Crawford? Both are dynamic punchers with skill, speed, power and great chins.
Munguia in Big Bear
Super middleweight contender Jaime Munguia is two weeks away from his match with Erik Bazinyan at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. ESPN will show the Top Rank card.
“Erik Bazinyan is a good fighter. He’s undefeated. He switches stances. We need to be careful with that. He’s taller and has a longer reach than me. He has a good jab. He can punch well on the inside. He’s a fighter who comes with all the desire to excel,” said Munguia.
Bazinyan has victories over Ronald Ellis and Alantez Fox.
In case you didn’t know, Munguia moved over to Top Rank but still has ties with Golden Boy Promotions and Zanfer Promotions. Bazinyan is promoted by Eye of the Tiger.
This is the Tijuana fighter’s first match with Top Rank since losing to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last May in Las Vegas. He is back with trainer Erik Morales.
Callum Walsh photo credit: Lina Baker
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60 Years Ago This Month, the Curtain Fell on the Golden Era of TV Boxing
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The Sept. 11, 1964 fight between Dick Tiger and Don Fullmer marked the end of an era. The bout aired on ABC which had taken the reins from NBC four years earlier. This would be the final episode of the series informally known as the “Friday Night Fights” or the “Fight of the Week,” closing the door on a 20-year run. In the future, boxing on free home TV (non-cable) would be sporadic, airing mostly on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The days when boxing was a weekly staple on at least one major TV network were gone forever.
During the NBC years, the show ran on Friday in the 10:00-11-00 pm slot for viewers in the Eastern Time Zone and the “studio” was almost always Madison Square Garden. The sponsor from the very beginning was the Gillette razor company (during the ABC run, El Producto Cigars came on as a co-sponsor).
Gillette sponsored many sporting events – the Kentucky Derby, the World Series, the U.S. Open golf tournament and the Blue-Gray college football all-star game, to name just a few – all of which were bundled under the handle of the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports. Every sports fan in America could identify the catchphrase that the company used to promote their disposable “Blue Blades” – “Look Sharp, Feel Sharp, Be Sharp!” — and the melody of the Gillette jingle would become the most-played tune by marching bands at high school and college football halftime shows (the precursor, one might say, of the Kingsmen’s “Louie, Louie”).
The Sept. 11 curtain-closer wasn’t staged at Madison Square Garden but in Cleveland with the local area blacked out.
Dick Tiger, born and raised in Nigeria, was making his second start since losing his world middleweight title on a 15-round points decision to Joey Giardello. Don Fullmer would be attempting to restore the family honor. Dick Tiger was 2-0-1 vs. Gene Fullmer, Don’s more celebrated brother. Their third encounter, which proved to be Gene Fullmer’s final fight, was historic. It was staged in Ibadan, Nigeria, the first world title fight ever potted on the continent of Africa.
In New York, the epitaph of free TV boxing was written three weeks earlier when veteran Henry Hank fought up-and-comer Johnny Persol to a draw in a 10-round light heavyweight contest at the Garden. This was the final Gillette fight from the place where it all started.
Some historians trace the advent of TV boxing in the United States to Sept. 29, 1944, when a 20-year-old boxer from Connecticut, Willie Pep, followed his manager’s game plan to perfection, sticking and moving for 15 rounds to become the youngest featherweight champion in history, winning the New York version of the title from West Coast veteran Albert “Chalky” Wright.
There weren’t many TVs in use in those days. As had been true when the telephone was brand new, most were found in hospitals, commercial establishments, and in the homes of the very wealthy. But within a few years, with mass production and tumbling prices, the gizmo became a living room staple and the TV repairman, who made house calls like the family doctor, had a shop on every Main Street.
Boxing was ideally suited to the infant medium of television because the action was confined to a small area that required no refurbishment other than brighter illumination, keeping production costs low. The one-minute interval between rounds served as a natural commercial break. The main drawback was that a fight could end early, meaning fewer commercials for the sponsor who paid a flat rate.
At its zenith, boxing in some locales aired five nights a week. And it came to be generally seen that this oversaturation killed the golden goose. One by one, the small fight clubs dried up as fight fans stayed home to watch the fights on TV. In the big arenas, attendance fell off drastically. Note the difference between Pep vs. Wright, the 1944 originator, and Hank vs. Persol, also at Madison Square Garden:
Willie Pep vs. Chalky Wright Sept. 29, 1944 attendance 19,521
Henry Hank vs. Johnny Persol Aug. 21, 1964 attendance 5,219
(True, Pep vs. Wright was a far more alluring fight, but this fact alone doesn’t explain the wide gap. Published attendance counts aren’t always trustworthy. In the eyes of the UPI reporter who covered the Hank-Persol match, the crowd looked smaller. He estimated the attendance at 3,000.)
Hank vs. Persol was an entertaining bout between evenly-matched combatants. The Tiger-Fullmer bout, which played out before a sea of empty seats, was a snoozer. Don Fullmer, a late sub for Rocky Rivero who got homesick and returned to Argentina, was there just for the paycheck. A Pittsburgh reporter wrote that the match was as dull as a race between two turtles. Scoring off the “5-point-must” system, the judges awarded the match to Dick Tiger by margins of 6, 6, and 7 points.
And that was that. Some of the most sensational fights in the annals of boxing aired free on a major TV network, but the last big bang of the golden era was hardly a bang, merely a whimper.
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A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.
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The photo accompanying this article is from the 1962 fight at Madison Square Garden between Dick Tiger (on the right) and Henry Hank. To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
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