The Big Fight (14 page)

At seventeen, Benitez shocked veteran Antonio “Kid Pambele” Cervantes to capture the WBA junior welterweight crown and become the youngest boxing champion in history.
Seventeen!
When I was seventeen, I was three long years away from competing in the Olympics. At twenty, he won the WBC welterweight championship by beating Carlos Palomino. He knocked out Randy Shields in six rounds. I couldn't put Shields away in ten, and was fortunate to earn the decision. In thirtynine fights, a draw vs. Harold Weston was the only blemish on his record.

Outside the ropes was an entirely different matter, and that's where he was vulnerable. His weakness? The same as many fighters: the opposite sex. His father, Gregorio, became so annoyed with Wilfred's lack of discipline that he predicted that it would likely cost him his belt.

“Both my wife and I are very disgusted with Wilfred,” the elder Benitez said. “Even if they gave me $200,000 to work in the corner, I would not . . . he has not listened to anything I have told him . . . he would rather be out somewhere—anywhere—than in the gym. I have told him many times that Leonard will be in top shape and in top form, and that Leonard will beat him if he doesn't train.”

Gregorio, who managed his son before he sold his interest to Jim Jacobs, the noted boxing film collector, later claimed he was merely trying to motivate him (“If I say he is going to win, then he no work”), although that type of psychological ploy wasn't something my father would ever have needed to motivate me. As much as I adored women, I knew my priorities, which was why Juanita spent very little time at our training camps and why, with one exception, the two of us did not have sex in the months leading up to a big fight. Ali couldn't say I was a “bad nigger” anymore.

I didn't pay attention to anything Gregorio Benitez said. I always felt that the write-ups in the papers did nothing to enlighten me about a fighter's strengths or weaknesses. I saw what I needed to see on film, and it was not just their footwork and punching tendencies that provided important clues. It was the words they chose and the tone they adopted in interviews. Was there the slightest sign of fear in their voice, or in their eyes, and if so, how could I take advantage of it? It was risky, however, to frame too much of any strategy on these celluloid images. How Benitez fought Palomino would no doubt be different from how he would cope with my habits. I didn't move my feet the way Cervantes did or attack like Weston. No two fighters are the same.

In breaking down Benitez from head to toe, his assets were impossible to overlook. What impressed me the most was how elusive he was, moving his head at the last possible instant to avoid direct contact. He was a very effective counterpuncher with each hand, which prevented his foes from being too aggressive, and switched easily between a righthanded and southpaw stance. When pinned against the ropes, he was extremely dangerous, and though he was not regarded as a knockout puncher, he placed his shots well. The final blow receives most of the attention from boxing fans, but it's usually the accumulation of punches that sends a fighter to the deck. Benitez, from what I heard, was also in excellent condition. Perhaps the master psychologist Papa Benitez knew what he was doing after all.

Nonetheless, I knew there was a way to beat him. There was a way to beat everybody.

One clue I picked up on film was that Benitez didn't like his opponents dictating the fight to him. If he was not in control, he became a little unsure of himself. Benitez was able to regain the upper hand—he survived three knockdowns against Bruce Curry during their 1977 bout in winning a split decision—but I planned to keep him on the defensive the whole night. I would attack from every conceivable angle, changing speeds the same way a pitcher does on the mound. Exploiting a small advantage in reach, I would use the left jab to score points and wear him down. He also had a tendency to dip his head as he threw his left, leaving him open to my uppercut. In my favor, too, was the fact that I'd fought eight times already in 1979, while Benitez had been out of the ring since March, when he beat Weston in their rematch.

As for my own work in the gym, my sparring partners got the better of me during the first week or two. That was not unusual. Once the rust was gone, I took command and put the hurt on them. I was serious when I sparred. A lot of fighters don't mind if others hit the bags or make loud noises in the background while they're in the ring. Not me. In order to totally concentrate, I needed everyone else to stop what they were doing. Sparring is not just to develop the muscles; sparring is to develop the mind.

The fight being held in Vegas, I'd have another key advantage over Benitez: Vegas was my home away from home, where I had already fought four times and felt at ease among the high rollers and celebrities. Benitez, despite his Playboy reputation, had never been on a stage quite like this and was likely to get distracted, if only slightly, and fights are often lost when one of the competitors is not completely focused on the man who will come at him from the other corner determined to beat his brains in. You can't wait until the day of the fight to enter that zone. You must be in it for days, if not weeks. It's no different, really, from the leading man who must memorize his lines in rehearsal and get into character before the cameras roll.

Another place I felt at home was on national television, and the fight was to be broadcast by ABC and Howard Cosell. Beginning with the Games in Montreal and my pro debut against Vega, I was on TV regularly. Benitez was not.

Then there was Caesars. It was boxing's new mecca, replacing Madison Square Garden in New York, which had held that honor for most of the twentieth century. By the late 1970s, Caesars was where the money was and where boxing was much more than a sport. It was a spectacle, with the boxers' names on the marquee in giant black letters, like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

Nothing compared to Caesars: the aroma of cigars and booze, the parking lot packed with Ferraris and Rolls-Royces, the sexy outfits and fancy jewelry the gorgeous women wore at ringside, the organized-crime figures you could spot from a mile away, the Hollywood celebs who showed up to be seen. I wouldn't choose to fight anywhere else.

As November 30 approached, the atmosphere, however, was different from how it normally was in the days leading to a championship fight. There was a real battle going on in Iran, as fifty-three innocent Americans were being held hostage by followers of the country's new leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini. The hostages were on everybody's minds.

Closer to home, just two days before I took on Benitez, a fighter named Willie Classen passed away from injuries sustained in a November 23 bout against Wilford Scypion at the Garden.

Given the awful beating Classen was taking, many felt the referee should have stopped the fight long before Classen was knocked out in the tenth round. Although I wasn't familiar with Classen, whenever a member of our small fraternity is killed in action, I feel a deep sense of loss, as do many of my colleagues. We are aware of the great danger every time we step inside the ropes, but that doesn't lessen our shock and grief. Yet I could not afford to mourn the unfortunate death of Willie Classen. Not then. Not during the few hours that remained before I would enter the arena to risk my own hide. If I did, and I lost my focus, I could end up just like him.

By then I was already in the last stage of the change in personality I underwent before every critical match. As fight night neared, I became high-strung, rude, snapping at people for no apparent reason. Not having sex for months didn't exactly lighten the mood. To their credit, the boys gave me a lot of leeway and didn't take it personally. I was aware of my behavior, but it was more important to preserve the level of aggression I would rely on in the ring. Unless I brought out the savage in me at the right moment, I'd be doomed, and once I adopted that mind-set, I could be as mean as any brawler, especially when I was in trouble, as I was against Marcos Geraldo and would be against Tommy Hearns. I hated to lose more than anything.

Of course, in the weeks prior to any fight, it was difficult, and unwise, to maintain the edge every second. If I did, I would burn out just as I did in the gym while I prepared for Johnny Gant. Only, any loss of motivation against Benitez would be much more dangerous. I would not be able to take a week off and escape to rustic Vermont to clear my head. Gant, with all due respect, was no Benitez.

I would need to find a distraction. The answer was television. Situation comedies and action-adventure films often took my attention, if only for an hour or two, away from Wilfred Benitez. As the years went by, I turned into a VHS junkie, buying practically every tape in the store. I would slide a tape into the machine, and if it didn't instantly produce a new world, much like the comic book heroes of my youth, I'd put in another until I found the appropriate diversion. After a short respite, I returned to the task at hand, visualizing how I'd break down the other man's spirit and defenses and win the fight.

On the day before the Benitez bout, I went for a three-mile run at six A.M. Jake and Angelo were not crazy about the idea, but running calmed me down. As I kept telling everyone, the fight was for “all the marbles.”

Win, and I would be the new champion. Lose, and I would be what my critics had said all along—overrated, made-for-TV, style with no substance.

The latest question from the doubters was how I might fare if the fight lasted the full fifteen rounds. I had yet to go past ten, while Benitez went fifteen in five fights, including the previous two. No matter. I was in tremendous shape and knew when to conserve energy and pace myself. Moving up from a scheduled six to eight to ten to twelve rounds was not a hard transition to make earlier in my career. Why should fifteen, if it went that long, be any tougher? I sparred five-minute rounds in camp instead of three to build stamina. That was the only adjustment.

I was installed as a 3–1 favorite, almost unprecedented for a challenger, although I never paid much attention to the odds. The odds don't mean a damn thing when the bell rings.

Yet, as prepared as I was, one authority in the boxing business outside my circle believed I needed some last-minute advice. I was in my room around nine P.M., going through my normal visualization about what I anticipated for the fight, when the phone rang. It was Muhammad Ali.

I couldn't believe it. Ali was calling
me.

After I got over the shock, I listened intently. It was partly due to the suggestions Ali made in his dressing room at Yankee Stadium in 1976 that I didn't sign with an established promoter. I was sure he'd come up with another gem. I wasn't disappointed.

“Don't do any showboating,” he warned. “The judges won't like it.”

I had to chuckle. Ali's warnings were akin to Richard Nixon giving a lecture on how to run a clean White House. Nobody clowned around like Muhammad Ali, who threw away more rounds than many fighters won. But he made a good point. The last thing the Vegas judges wanted to watch was another lounge act; there were plenty on the Strip already. They wanted to see punches that connected. They wanted to see a fighter serious about his craft. Considering the likelihood of an extremely competitive fight, I knew one or two points could make the difference.

I thanked Ali and went to sleep—well, I tried to. I never got much rest the night before a fight, and this being my first title fight, I got less than usual.

Around midnight, I jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom to look in the mirror. For ten minutes I did some shadowboxing. The exercise was geared more to checking out my mental state: Was I willing to put everything on the line? The answer was a resounding yes. I slipped back under the covers.

About a half hour later, I got up again and went through the same drill, the punches harder, the dancing faster, the eyes wider.

I got up three or four more times until, around four A.M., I finally went to sleep.

 

 

 

B
enitez and I walked toward the center of the ring to receive the traditional prefight instructions from referee Carlos Padilla. Any assumption on my part that Benitez would be overwhelmed by the moment was immediately put aside.

He stared me down as we used to stare at each other in the hood, where most street fights wouldn't begin for maybe thirty or forty minutes while each man, his fists defiantly raised, attempted to scare off the other. Forcing someone to give up in our unwritten code generated more respect among the group than beating the living daylights out of him. Benitez was trying to establish a tone so that I would be more wary of him once the bell rang. Prizefighters since John L. Sullivan in the late 1800s had played these mind games all the time. In this case, there was reason to believe it might work. As we stood only inches apart, I was the one who appeared tentative.

I needed to recover, and fast. When I retreated to the corner, I told myself, here was the championship fight I had yearned for since committing my heart and soul to this life three years earlier. I thought for the longest time that I would never want anything as much as I wanted the gold medal. Yet as the ring started to clear at Caesars, so did my mind, giving way to the will that defined me as a fighter, and a man.

In these final moments, I never felt more alive and more authentic. It was as if I entered a room where no one else was permitted to go, where there was no confusion and no fear, where I felt happy and at peace despite taking part in a sport that required merciless brutality. In a strange way that made sense to me, I found boxing's warlike nature serene, almost beautiful, and it was why I made my comebacks years later against my better judgment and the counsel of others. I never did it for the money; because of Mike Trainer's shrewd investments, I was set for life. I didn't do it for the fame, either; there'd be an endless supply of that as well. I returned to the ring to experience the pure, almost indescribable sensation I could not attain anywhere else. I miss it terribly.