|
by Ron Fimrite
For the better part of a decade fight promoters in the U.S. vainly beseeched him to defect and take on the likes of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in bouts worth countless millions. But the only gold Cuban heavyweight Teofil-Stevenson seemingly cared about was Olympic gold, and he won more than his share of that. In fact, because he refused to turn professional and leave his homeland, he became the only three-time heavyweight boxing gold medalist in Olympic history. And in the process he left avaricious promoters Don King and Bob Arum moaning in despair over what might have been.
Stevenson outpointed Zaev to seal his reign as a three-time heavyweight gold medalist.
photograph by
"But what is a million dollars against the love of eight million Cubans?" Stevenson asked, hewing to Cuban president Fidel Castro's Communist party line.
Stevenson first tantalized the boxing crowd at the 1972 Munich Games, when, at 20, he KO'd three straight opponents, including future American professional Duane Bobick, while fighting, Stevenson later revealed, with a fractured right hand. At the Montreal Games four years later, he KO'd four more fighters, including American John Tate, to win his second gold. By then fight fans worldwide were apoplectic, for Stevenson had all the requisite gifts—size (6'3", 220), hand and foot speed, and a gorgeous righthand knockout punch. And with his finely chiseled features and rippling physique, he was even more handsome than Ali.
"He's the most perfectly balanced fighter I ever saw," said veteran U.S. trainer Emanuel Steward.
"He'd be phenomenal as a pro," said an enraptured King. "In a class with Ali and Frazier."
Only Ali seemed to entertain doubts, dismissing Stevenson as "a good amateur, a three-round fighter. If he's offered $2 million and he don't take it, he's a damn fool."
King and Arum were both willing to pay that much—and more. Stevenson serenely ignored them, content apparently to accept the more modest rewards of his government: two-story houses in both Havana and his hometown of Delicias and two Soviet-made automobiles. He was also, of course, a national hero, a Cuban who could lick the world, even if it was only an amateur world. All this seemed enough for a man born into poverty—his father, an immigrant to Cuba from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, worked in a sugar mill in Delicias—and with few expectations in life beyond what his iron fists could bring him.
Stevenson had so little competition at the 1980 Moscow Games, partly because of the U.S. boycott, that he seemed profoundly bored by the experience. He KO'd his first two opponents, but then, after nine straight Olympic knockouts, was obliged to go the three-round distance against the last two—a cowering Hungarian, Istvan Levai, and a runtish Soviet, Pyotr Zaev. The Moscow fans whistled in derision as Stevenson strode, unmarked, scarcely even perspiring, from the ring as a three-time champion. There was also the suspicion that, approaching 30, his once formidable talent was in decline. (The gold medal heavyweight bout will be held tonight at Alexander Memorial Coliseum.)
Stevenson never had a chance for a fourth gold because Cuba joined the Soviets in boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Games. He might not have won, anyway, for he had failed even to make the national team for the 1983 Pan American Games, and his best years were well behind him. Also he was besieged with personal problems—the death of his father, a marriage that ended in divorce and an auto accident that killed a motorcyclist. In July 1988 Stevenson, at 36, retired from the ring, leaving unanswered the question of just how good he might have been.
Stevenson had no regrets, though. He became a boxing advisor for Cuba's National Institute for Sports, Physical Education and Recreation. "So there are world champions who earn a lot of money," he told the Washington Post a year after his retirement, "but they don't know how to sign their names. They are not useful to their society. They are in the same condition they began—without a penny. And they are even worse because they have burnt all their youth."
Maybe he was right all along.
SI Olympic Dailies
|
