The Big Fight (15 page)

The bell rang. I was determined to show Benitez who was in control from the outset. His cocky stare was soon replaced by a look of genuine concern. He was in for the fight of his life. I landed the left jab and right hand, which created an opening for the hook. I won the first two rounds easily.

In the third, I nailed Benitez with a left, which promptly sent him to the canvas. Perhaps I gave the champ too much credit. Perhaps this evening, similar to many others in my undefeated career, was destined to be a short one. Whenever I put another man down, I finished him off.

Not this man. Benitez rose and took a standing eight-count. He was not seriously injured, and when he came out for round four, I felt like I was chasing a ghost. He slipped one punch after another. I was known as the dancer with the slick moves, but facing him was like looking in a mirror, and I did not appreciate what I was seeing. I never missed so many punches, and that takes a heavy toll, as an exhausted George Foreman discovered against Ali in Zaire. You spend more energy hitting air than hitting flesh, and it begins to wear on your confidence. Why am I not landing punches? What is wrong with me?

It became apparent that this was going to be a
long
night. Which meant that both of us, with our experience, instinctively sensed the need to pace ourselves. At various intervals, we took about twenty seconds off to step back and, standing almost flat-footed, allow time to go by without initiating any rough exchanges on the inside. Similar respites take place in every fight that doesn't end in the early going, and you can see it in the eyes of each man, who, with legs burning and lungs on the verge of exploding, relays a signal to the other without saying a word. The restless spectators, frustrated by the lack of sustained action, might not approve, but they can't relate to the pressures and demands we face every moment in the tiny space called a ring. Nobody, not even Joe Frazier, has been able to maintain a frantic pace for three full minutes round after round.

In the sixth round, our foreheads accidentally cracked together, although I was fortunate to fare better in the exchange. Blood poured down his face, while there was only a small welt on my forehead. The danger was that the blood would flow into his eyes and impair his vision, which had stopped countless fights in the past. The sport is filled with exceptional boxers who did not reach their potential because they cut too easily. Yet I did not try too aggressively to take advantage of the bleeding. I knew he could still counter and score points if I was sloppy. Benitez also injured his left thumb, and no fighter at this level is skillful enough to prevail with only one good hand. But he carried on, and actually got stronger, landing a number of solid shots over the next few rounds. My respect for him grew with every blow.

Part of the reason for my uneven performance was my fault, a stubbornness in continuing to depend on the right hand even after Angelo urged me to use the more effective jab. I suppose my ego, often a fighter's worst enemy, did not quite believe he could be in front of me one second, ready to be hit with a hard right, and gone the very next. This being my first title appearance, I sought the glory of a dazzling knockout. There was nothing glamorous about winning on points.

The main reason was Benitez. I wasn't the only boxer who could dig deep inside himself. In the ninth, after he landed a few well-timed licks, I retaliated with my most lethal combinations of the evening, sending him into the ropes. Still, he refused to go down. The critics were wrong about him, just as they were wrong about me. He was a warrior. I rocked him with a strong left hook and two overhand rights in round eleven, knocking out his mouthpiece, but not him. His father must have been proud. The fatigue was setting in, though, as I was in uncharted territory, past the tenth round, for the first time. My arms were spent. My head was pounding. My lungs were gasping for air. Maybe I couldn't go the distance.

It was not during the actual fighting that I felt the worst of it. I was too busy searching for an opening or attempting to avoid his combinations. It was during the breaks between rounds. That's how it always was. Resting in the corner for the one minute that never seemed to last long enough, I'd catch a glimpse of the man in the opposite corner and sometimes ask myself:
Why should I put my body through another three minutes of torture?

It didn't matter one bit whether I was in control of the fight. My body wouldn't know the difference. No wonder some fighters surrender on their stools. They assess their predicament and decide that giving up is better than absorbing the pain guaranteed to come again if they answer the bell.

“Don't go to sleep on me now,” Angelo warned after round eleven.

I didn't. I got back into the zone. To me, giving up was far worse than any amount of pain. My body would heal a lot faster than my pride.

Benitez remained sharp in rounds twelve and thirteen and took the fourteenth, perhaps his finest of the night, to give him hope of retaining the title with a strong fifteenth. He was as sure of himself as he was in the prefight stare, grinning when we met in the middle of the ring for the touching of the gloves to kick off the last three minutes.

I could not believe he was still on his feet, and while I was convinced I was leading on points, I couldn't be convinced enough. Judges were known to render stranger verdicts, as they already had on the undercard by awarding middleweight champion Vito Antuofermo, a 4–1 underdog, a draw against Marvin Hagler. There's no question Hagler was robbed. It's no mystery he never again trusted judges in Las Vegas. I would have felt the same way.

“This fight is very, very close,” Angelo told me in the corner. “You got to fight like an animal.”

Which was exactly what I tried to do, as did Benitez, the two of us giving the fans the best stretch of fierce toe-to-toe action in the entire fight.

I landed a hard left and soon followed with a right to the jaw. Later in the round came three left hooks, and with less than a minute to go, Benitez was too worn out to slip away once more. He was mine. At last.

A stinging left put him on the canvas. He rose quickly, as he did in the third, and grinned, but he was hurt. He was hurt bad. After Benitez took the mandatory eight-count, I went in for the kill. That is what fighters are taught to do from their first day in the gym, and I was no exception.

I never got the chance. Padilla ended it for me with only six seconds left, and it was the right call. Benitez was helpless.

The next thing I remember, I was standing on the second strand of ropes, my arms raised triumphantly in the air. I wasn't filled with the odd range of emotions I felt when I was on the podium in Montreal. I was ecstatic. The win, making me the new WBC welterweight champion, represented a beginning, not an end. The future was limitless.

After celebrating with Jake, Janks, Angelo, and my brothers, I was met near the center of the ring by Benitez. We hugged.

Some might wonder how two men who for forty-five minutes tried to destroy each other could embrace so soon after their battle was over, but it was precisely because we faced each other in combat that we needed to share this moment. Only the two of us—not our handlers or our loved ones—could relate to the sacrifices we made, physically, mentally, and spiritually. For months, the opponent was the enemy, the major obstacle standing in the path of greater earnings and greater fame. Yet, as most of us who fight for a living come to recognize, some sooner than others, the opponent is also a partner on the same journey.

Moments later, I climbed outside the ropes to do an interview with Howard Cosell. I paid my respects to the Classen family and praised Benitez. I then spoke about my performance.

“Don't be cocky,” Howard teased, punching me lightly on the chin. There was no danger of that happening. Not after the punishment I took from Benitez, to date, the worst of my career.

For a fighter not recognized for his power, he fooled me. My face was swollen around the cheekbones and there were large welts under both eyes. I was nauseous, dehydrated, and my right hand was throbbing, as if someone had injected a needle into my knuckles. I spoke to the reporters afterward, with Benitez at my side, but instead of attending a celebration, I went to the hospital for X-rays of my hand, which proved negative. By around eleven P.M., I was back in my suite at Caesars, soothing the aches and pains in a tub of hot water. I lay there for an hour, at least, and could have stayed longer. I was in no mood to see a soul.

Soaking in the bath, stealing an occasional glance at the ugly face in the mirror, I asked myself the same questions most fighters do once every battle is over, win or lose: Was it really worth it? Were the rewards, as lucrative as they might be, worth getting beaten up, not to mention the hits one must endure day after day in the gym? And what about the chances of permanent brain damage? Fighters generally bury those fears, but I had met enough who took too many blows to the head and by their late thirties or early forties were never the same again. Would that be my pitiful fate as well? Would I have to depend on another person for the most menial tasks?

The questions were more relevant than ever. With the $1 million from the Benitez fight, after doling out a substantial portion to the government and my handlers, there was still plenty in the bank for me to walk away for good and live comfortably for the rest of my life. It was tempting.

“Ray, you are the world champion now. You have nothing left to prove,” Mike Trainer said at the hospital. “This is a brutal way to make a living. Isn't it wonderful to know that you do not have to ever fight again if you don't want to?” Mike meant every word. He could never bear to see me get hit. He stayed in the dressing room until each fight was over.

But who was I kidding? I wasn't going to walk away.

Not after climbing to the top of my profession at the age of twenty-three. Not with more lucrative paydays in the years ahead. Not with there being no welterweight alive who could take me down.

And not as long as everyone in my circle kept urging me to continue—and why wouldn't they? Even if they harbored serious doubts about the condition I was in, mentally or physically, which I know they did, especially in the weeks leading up to the Hagler bout in 1987, what would possibly compel them to speak their minds? A fear for my safety? Please. They cared about me, but they cared more for their own welfare, and no one else could provide for them and their families as I could.

Every fighter is aware, or should be, of how damaging it is to be surrounded by a group of yes-men who won't pose the questions that have to be asked. The danger, of course, is that the boxer, oblivious, will take on the next assignment and the one after that, and who will ever know which blows were the ones that made him an invalid for the rest of his life? For Muhammad Ali, was it Joe Frazier who gave him Parkinson's? Earnie Shavers? Leon Spinks? Larry Holmes? Ken Norton? Who? If I said, at the age of fifty-four, that I was thinking about coming out of retirement to fight Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather Jr., some of the boys would say, “Go for it.” I'm half serious.

More than anything else, I wanted to be remembered as one of the immortals in boxing history, not just among my generation. I knew that defeating Benitez was not going to put me in that category. That goal is what inspired me to go running at five o'clock each morning, and to hit the bags until my hands could take no more. The fans had barely finished filing out of Caesars when the speculation began over who would be my next big opponent. The most likely candidates were Roberto Duran and Pipino Cuevas.

That day would arrive soon enough, but on this day, I paused to reflect on what I had just accomplished. I was now the champ, and no two words mean more to a fighter. For the rest of my life, no matter how I would fare in future contests as my skills deteriorated, I'd be called “the champ.” Not “the champion,” mind you—“the
champ.
” It had to do with respect, as my father preached. “If a man doesn't have respect,” he said, “he doesn't have his soul.”

 

 

 

B
enitez and I never met again in the ring. I would see him at other fights throughout the 1980s, but it wasn't until about a decade ago, when I paid him a visit in Puerto Rico while I was promoting an ESPN boxing show, that the two of us got a chance to spend some quality time together. It was a day I will never forget.

I picked up his mother first in San Juan, and we drove for more than an hour before arriving at a convalescent home in the suburbs. The facility resembled many of these places, the odor of sickness and death in every corridor. We reached a room that was almost dark, its lone inhabitant sitting in a rocking chair, his face and stomach bloated, his eyes staring blankly into space.

“Wilfred,” his mother, Clara, said, “do you know who this is?”

“No,” he said, examining me from head to toe, “but I know he beat me.”

I forced a smile. I was devastated. It was one thing to meet fighters from earlier eras and see the harm our sport can inflict. It was quite another to witness the effects on someone from my era. In his early forties, his mind was essentially gone, the heavy price for sixty-two fights in a career that lasted way too long, until 1990. The official diagnosis was traumatic encephalopathy, a disease caused by a series of concussions. I couldn't help but think it could have been me in that rocking chair. Benitez squandered his entire fortune, and that could have happened to me, too, as it did to many fighters who made sketchy investments or were ripped off by those they should never have trusted. He didn't have a Mike Trainer to protect him. Few did.

Benitez and I were brought to another room, where, to my surprise, a screen had been set up to show our 1979 fight to about two dozen people. I was ambivalent about the idea, to say the least. Benitez would not remember the night, and if he did, why, in his helpless state, should he be subjected again to his most famous defeat?