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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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R.I.P. IBF founder Bob Lee who was Banished from Boxing by the FBI

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“The image some people have of me is disappointing,” said Bob Lee in a 2006 interview, “but I also feel I had a positive impact on the sport…”

Lee, the founder of the International Boxing Federation who died yesterday (Sunday, March 24) at age 91, spoke those words to Philadelphia Daily News boxing writer Bernard Fernandez who was the first person to interview him when he emerged from a federal prison in 2006. Lee served 22 months on charges that included racketeering, money laundering, and tax evasion.

Born and raised in northern New Jersey and a lifelong resident of the Garden State, Lee, a former police detective, founded the International Boxing Federation (henceforth IBF) in 1983 after a failed bid to win the presidency of the World Boxing Association. At the time, there were only two relevant sanctioning bodies, the WBA, then headquartered in Venezuela, and the WBC, headquartered in Mexico. Both organizations were charged with favoring boxers from Spanish-speaking countries in their ratings at the expense of boxers from the United States.

Bob Lee’s brainchild, whose stated mission was to rectify that injustice, achieved instant credibility when Marvin Hagler and Larry Holmes turned their back on the established organizations. Hagler’s 1983 bout with Wilford Scypion and Holmes’ 1984 match with Bonecrusher Smith were world title fights sanctioned exclusively by the IBF, the last of the three extant organizations to do away with 15-round title fights.

Lee’s world was rocked in November of 1999 when a federal grand jury handed down an indictment that accused him and three IBF officials, including his son Robert W. “Robby” Lee Jr., of taking bribes from promoters and managers in return for higher rankings. The FBI, after a two-year investigation, concluded that $338,000 was paid over a 13-year period by individuals representing 23 boxers.

The government’s key witness was C. Douglas Beavers, the longtime chairman of the IBF ratings committee who wore a wire as a government informant in return for immunity and provided video-tape evidence of a $5000 payout in a seedy Virginia motel room. Promoters Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner both testified that they gave the IBF $100,000 to get the organization’s seal of approval for a match between heavyweight champion George Foreman and Axel Schulz (Arum asserted that he paid the money through a middleman, Stan Hoffman). In return, the IBF gave Schulz a “special exemption” to its rules, allowing the German to bypass Michael Moorer who had a rematch clause that would never be honored. (In a sworn deposition, Big George testified that he had no knowledge of any kickback).

After a long-drawn-out trial that consumed four months including 15 days of jury deliberations, Bob Lee was acquitted on all but six of 32 counts. His son, charged with nine counts, was acquitted on all nine. The jury simply did not trust the veracity of many that testified for the prosecution. (No surprise there; after all, they were boxing people.) But neither did the jury buy into the argument that whatever money Lee received was in the form of gifts and gratuities, a common business practice.

The IBF was run by a court-appointed overseer from January of 2000 until the fall of 2003. Under its current head, Daryl Peoples, who came up from the ranks, assuming the presidency in 2010, the IBF has stayed out of the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.

As part of his sentence, Bob Lee was prohibited from having any further dealings with boxing and that would have included buying a ticket to sit in the cheap seats at a boxing card. This was adding insult to injury as Lee’s passion for boxing ran deep. As a boy working as a caddy at a New Jersey golf course, he had met Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, two of the proudest moments of his life.

As for his contributions to the sport, Lee had this to say in his post-prison talk with Bernard Fernandez: “We instituted the 168-pound [super middleweight] weight class. We took measures to reduce the incidence of eye injuries in boxing. We changed the weigh-in from the day of the fight to the day before, which prevented fighters from entering the ring so dehydrated that they were putting themselves at risk. All these things, and more, were tremendously beneficial to boxing. I’m very proud of all that we accomplished.”

Bob Lee was a tough old bird. Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1986, he was insulin-dependent for much of his adult life and yet he lived into his nineties. Although his coloration as a shakedown artist is a stain that will never go away, many people will tell you that, on balance, he was a good man whose lapses ought not define him.

That’s not for us to judge. We send our condolences to his loved ones. May he rest in peace.

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Australia’s Nikita Tszyu Stands Poised to Escape the Long Shadow of His Brother

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They held a confab for the boxing media last week at the spacious Las Vegas gym where WBO super welterweight champion Tim Tszyu has been training for his forthcoming match with Sebastian Fundora. Tim was there, of course, as were many of the fighters in the supporting bouts plus Tim’s younger brother Nikita who was inconspicuous in this gathering.

Nikita Tszyu isn’t on Saturday’s card and so was never spotlighted, but it’s likely that most of the media-types there knew nothing about him. Had they been Aussies, he wouldn’t have been able to blend into the scenery as the Sydneysider is already a major sports personality in the Land Down Under. More than that, he is seemingly on pace to become as big a star as his older brother who has been called the face of boxing in Australia.

In his last start, Nikita wrested the Australian 154-pound title from previously undefeated (10-0) Dylan Biggs. Their bout in the Australian harbor city of Newcastle headlined a pay-per-view telecast.

Nikita was down in the first 45 seconds of the contest and was buzzed in the third, but had Biggs in dire straits in the fourth and ended matters in the next frame with a wicked left hook to the liver. Biggs somehow made it to his feet, but the bout was waived off seconds later as Biggs’ corner was throwing in the towel.

It improved Nikita’s record to 8-0 (7 KOs) and burnished the reputation of the Tszyu dynasty. Collectively, the three Tszyu’s – his Hall of Fame father Kostya, his bother Tim and Nikita – are 48-0 in Australian rings.

Outside the squared circle, Nikita Tszyu, who is 26 years old and looks younger, comes across as thoroughly unspoiled. Talking with him, what started as a formal interview quickly became a relaxed chat between two old souls (as Nikita described himself) enjoying each others company. And as prizefighters go, he sure is different. A college grad, Nikita cited gardening, of all things, when we inquired if he had any hobbies.

As amateurs, Nikita had a deeper background and was more decorated than Tim. But in 2017, he turned his back on boxing to pursue a degree in architecture. He was away from boxing for five years before deciding to give the sport another fling.

“I wanted to be the first person in my family to be smart,” he says tongue-in-cheek when asked how he could abandon a sport that was seemingly in his blood. “My mom wanted one of us to get a college degree,” he says, elaborating. “When it wasn’t going to work out for Tim, it fell on my shoulders.”

As is well known, Nikita’s parents divorced (Nikita was then just starting high school) and his dad then returned to his native Russia and started a new family. But the brothers and their father remain on cordial terms – they speak on the phone periodically – and they are close to Kostya’s parents (their paternal grandparents) who live near Nikita in the Sydney area and are currently watching Nikita’s three dogs, a husky, a French Bulldog, and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. “I can’t imagine a life without them,” says Nikita who, unlike his brother, has no special lady living under his roof.

The family tie extends to the brothers’ trainer Igor Goloubev who is married to their aunt (Kostya’s sister). Uncle Igor, a training partner of Kostya Tszyu in the old days, came to Sydney in 1997 with a touring Russian amateur team and, unlike the famous boxer, never left.

During the lull between the two generations of fighting Tszyus, Igor Goloubev founded a construction company that he still owns. While working for an architectural firm (working remotely because of Covid), Nikita was able to work part-time for his uncle which was good hands-on experience for a future architect.

When Goloubev counsels one of the brothers between rounds, the old becomes new again and this blast from the past doesn’t stop there. The brothers are managed by Newcastle NSW businessman Glen Jennings who formerly managed Kostya, widely considered one of the two or three best junior welterweights of all time. (Jennings says that as a boxer Nikita is more like his dad whereas Tim is more of a pressure fighter.)

Glen Jennings Flanked by Tim and Nikita

Glen Jennings flanked by Tim and Nikita

This is Nikita Tszyu’s second trip to Las Vegas. He was here last year when Tim was preparing for a match with Jermell Charlo. When that match fell out, Nikita used the occasion for a little holiday, the highlight of which was a hike through Northern California’s Redwood Forest, home to the world’s tallest trees.

“Your national parks are the coolest things about America,” he says. As for the food? ”Too much fat,” he says, wrinkling his nose, but that’s a moot point as Team Tszyu now travels with its own chef.

Nikita Tszyu will defend his Australian title on April 24th. At this writing, the opponent is uncertain. Three leading candidates fell by the wayside, two because they lost a fight they were supposed to win, ruining their credibility, and another because he got injured. Finding good opponents may prove to be a recurrent hassle in part because Nikita, unlike his brother, is a southpaw.

Coming up the ladder, Tim Tszyu looked forward to fighting at the MGM Grand where his father won his first title (TKO 6 over Jake Rodriguez in 1995) and had one of his most memorable fights, a second-round stoppage of Zab Judah in 2001. The T-Mobile Arena didn’t exist back then, but sits on MGM Grand property, so Saturday’s fight is a dream come true for the older Tszyu brother.

Looking down the road, it’s easy to envision Nikita becoming a headline attraction here too.

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Dalton Smith KOs Jose Zepeda and Sandy Ryan Stops Terri Harper in England

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Dalton Smith KOs Jose Zepeda and Sandy Ryan Stops Terri Harper in England

England showed off its talent in Sheffield.

Super lightweight prospect Dalton Smith advanced into the championship level and Sandy Ryan proved to be not just another world titlist on Saturday.

Dalton Smith (16-0, 12 KOs) faced the venomous punching power of Jose “Chon” Zepeda (37-5, 28 KOs) and eliminated him with a body shot knockout that left the world title challenger gasping for air at Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England.

“I had to be on my game. He (Zepeda) puts people to sleep,” said Smith.

If any questions existed on Smith’s ability to compete at the championship level, the 27-year-old answered emphatically with a clinical and professional-style win.

Smith walked into the prize ring realizing that southpaw slugger Zepeda could end the night with a single punch. He carefully measured the California-based fighter’s movements and punching power before stepping on the gas from the second round on.

“He’s a great fighter,” explained Smith of Zepeda. “That’s what made me train harder.”

During the first several rounds the two hard-hitting punchers were able to score. Zepeda clipped Smith with quick rights and occasional lefts but discovered that the British fighter has a chin. That seemed to allow Smith to open-up slightly more with one-two combinations.

After Smith gained serious momentum in the third and fourth rounds, Zepeda shortened up his stride and looked to put on more pressure. In the fifth round Zepeda moved closer into firing range and ran into a right cross to the belly that took the strength out of his legs. Down went Zepeda for the count at 1:25 of the fifth round.

“I was hitting him with clean shots and it wasn’t doing anything,” said Smith of his head attack.

Apparently, the body shot was the answer.

Sandy Ryan Wins Battle of Champions

WBO welterweight titlist Sandy Ryan won the battle between British champions with a pile-driving stoppage of Terri Harper who, after dropping down a weight division but was unable to be competitive.

Ryan (7-1-1, 3 KOs) walked into enemy territory and quieted the pro-Harper (14-2-2, 6 KOs) crowd with a riveting attack at Sheffield Arena. There was no stopping her on this night.

“I’m just happy,” said Ryan, 30, of Derby England.

After spending months in Las Vegas, Nevada living and training away from her home in England, the tall slender fighter Ryan finally was able to lure a fellow British world champion in the boxing ring.

“I was away from family and friends for so long,” Ryan said.

A close first round between the two female champions saw Ryan open up the second round behind a riveting left jab and body shots that made Harper hesitant and gun shy to counter.

Ryan seemed to sense early that she was in control and opened up with five- and six-punch combinations. And when Harper retaliated, Ryan returned fire again almost daring her rival to engage in a free-for-all.

Harper clinched several times in the third round to stymie Ryan’s constant attack, but it was not enough. The WBO titlist seemed even more eager to win by knockout and opened up with little concern of Harper’s counters.

In the fifth round it was obvious that Ryan was in complete control, the only question was if she could maintain the frenetic pace. Again, she opened up with punishing combinations as Harper looked for a solution. Instead, rights and lefts pummeled the super welterweight titlist until the end of the round.

Harper’s corner decided to end the fight, Referee Marcus McDonnell declared Ryan the winner at the end of the fifth round by technical knockout.

“I felt her fading,” said Ryan.

The win by Ryan sets her up for a rematch against Jessica McCaskill who holds the WBA and WBC welterweight titles. Their first encounter ended in a split draw after 10 rounds last September in Orlando, Florida.

Ryan expressed a desire to face any champion.

“Any big fight. All the big names,” Ryan said.

Other Results

Ishmael Davis (13-0) defeated Troy Williamson (20-3-1) by unanimous decision after 12 rounds for a regional middleweight title.

James Flint (14-1-2) handed Campbell Hatton (14-1) fis first defeat as a pro by unanimous decision after 10 rounds in a super lightweight match.

Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom

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