Inside the hotel room Mucho laid out a dozen poster-sized photos on Rigondeaux’s bed from Tijuana as Rigondeaux inspected each and nodded approval. He put two off to the side to keep for himself. Suddenly Boris tossed a velvet pouch onto the posters, and Rigo grunted and quickly seized upon it. As he loosened the string of the pouch, Rigondeaux wore the most elaborate smile I had ever seen him offer the world. A clump of diamond jewelry spilled out and issued over the blanket of his bed. One of his Miami handlers joyfully reached over to assist him in fastening a shimmering bracelet while another helped him clip an oversized, resplendent watch onto his wrist. Rigondeaux giggled as he held the most expensive item from the pouch, a rattlesnake-sized diamond necklace with a diamond-encrusted cross the size of a dog bone dangling off it. After he held the necklace aloft and bowed his head to place it around his neck, the imagery was unmistakable. We were revisiting the happiest moment of this man’s life at the Olympic medal ceremony. “All the world’s gold can fit in a kernel of corn,” is a ubiquitous quote of Cuba’s most famous poet, José Martí, painted across walls all over the island. Now Rigondeaux had finally traded in and traded up the Olympic gold medals he’d earned for this new treasure glittering on his wrists and around his neck. As Rigo admired the splendor, Brett asked him how much it was worth. Rigondeaux laughed and shook his head that he didn’t know. “It’s all theirs anyway,” he said under his breath in Spanish to no one in particular. It turned out that the diamonds were on loan from a Miami jeweler on the provision that Rigondeaux advertise their store with a patch on his trunks during his next fight.
Rigondeaux might not have known what the diamonds his handlers had hung off him like Christmas tree ornaments were worth, but he was the only man in the room who knew what they really cost. He’d answered the siren song to cross the Florida Straits to get here and have the opportunity that awaited him in less than forty-eight hours, but to do so meant being owned by this cast of characters—all at the expense of perhaps losing his family forever. As his eyes were lit up in the sparkles of those diamonds, nothing Faustian about the arrangement seemed to bother Rigondeaux.
I asked Héctor Vinent only once about the temptation of America for an athlete as gifted as he was. Vinent was as close to anyone on earth as Rigondeaux’s Ghost of Christmas Past. They were both born in Santiago de Cuba and each had won two Olympic gold medals. Vinent, twenty-five pounds heavier than Rigondeaux, stood to earn far greater rewards in defecting and turning professional as a welterweight. Yet he’d never tried, despite the circumstances of his era making it far easier to do so than Rigondeaux. Vinent had experienced as much suffering for something he hadn’t done in Havana as Rigondeaux had for everything he’d abandoned to arrive in Dallas. The difference between them was Rigondeaux’s force field of bitterness.
“We’ve drifted away from sports and jumped into politics.” Héctor smiled back then. “But I’ll answer your question. The U.S. is like a beautiful girl in love with you that you have to ignore. You resent and lament her and all you have left is living the rest of your life based on memories.”
Almost word for word Héctor spelled out Rigondeaux’s most burning justification for leaving. Who’d made the better decision? HBO boxing commentator Max Kellerman once pointed out that the easiest way to judge who was winning a fight in progress was simply to imagine whom you’d rather be. The polluted inner-sanctum feeling of that hotel room made that question a lot more difficult to answer when the choice was between Vinent and Rigondeaux. While Rigondeaux might have gained more by his decision, he’d certainly lost more, too.
A couple of hours later in Cowboys Stadium, the official press conference announcing the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito fight commenced. Bob Arum, the Harvard-educated former attorney for the Department of Justice turned boxing promoter, shuffled his seventy-nine-year-old legs toward the microphone in orthopedic shoes. Arum, looking like King Herod, had two luscious, twentysomething, high-heeled, fake-breasted, Latina ring card girls on either side of him smiling with demented salesmanship. Ten fighters, including Rigondeaux, were seated on Arum’s left and right, staring out toward the reporters, cameras, and a few hundred fans. The main event’s press conference an hour before had ten times the crowd.
After introducing a few of the other fighters, Arum swept a majestic open hand out toward the audience:
Now this next gentleman is truly a legend. He fought for the country of Cuba in two Olympiads, winning two gold medals. He was widely considered one of the great amateur fighters ever, right up there with the likes of Teófilo Stevenson. We’re truly privileged to have him here because he is truly something special. Early in October, I had the opportunity to visit Cuba. While I was there, I figured I would bring back a souvenir for Guillermo, who, unfortunately, is unable to go back. But that’s another story….
Oh yeah, that one. I was curious to hear Arum’s take on it.
Rigondeaux approached the stage with Luis DeCubas, his co-promoter, acting as his translator. DeCubas had very little intention of translating much that Rigondeaux had to say for the cameras and microphones. After Rigondeaux spoke, DeCubas seized the opportunity to praise Bob Arum for “having the balls” to stick it to Fidel by grabbing a star of Rigondeaux’s caliber. The impassioned speech underlined that Rigondeaux was fighting for all Cubans in Cuba and around the world who’d endured half a century’s oppression under the regime.
Crickets.
Arum seemed the least amused by the stunt. A Cuban boxer was a hard enough sell on an American stage without messy politics being injected into it.
After the rest of the fighters were introduced, had spoken, and been photographed—inventoried—I snuck over to the side of the stage and asked Arum’s surly private security guard if I could have a minute to talk with him. Arum came over and agreed to two minutes.
“You mentioned you were just in Cuba.”
“Speak into my other ear!” Arum growled. “I’m half-deaf, kid.”
I repeated the question into his good ear.
“I had a humanitarian visit delivering medical supplies to the Jewish community over there. It’s been fifty-three years since my last visit. I was a bit of a wild guy back then. Since 1957, a lot’s changed. Havana back then made Vegas at its worst look tame.”
“What about now?”
“It’s a different world. They’re poor but what amazed me is how content everybody seemed to be. I can’t explain it. Things are obviously very hard, but I traveled around a fair bit and I just can’t explain it. The people I saw loved Fidel Castro.”
“So signing Rigondeaux wasn’t any kind of thumbing your nose at Fidel?”
“Please. I promote boxers. The kid can obviously fight. Let’s see if he can entertain. Cubans have a tough time out here. They don’t sell. I don’t care how many medals you won back in Cuba. They don’t support their own.”
“Why is that?”
“Race might be an issue. Demographically the boxers are all black and Miami is a lot whiter than Havana, where Cubans are concerned.”
“In your introduction of Rigondeaux you referenced Teófilo Stevenson. Did you try to make that fight happen between him and Muhammad Ali?”
“I did. Didn’t happen. Complications.”
“What do you make of the fallout back in Cuba for Rigondeaux turning professional?”
“According to Castro, all the athletes who defect are traitors. Rigo’s defection particularly hurt because Castro was close to Rigo and they had dinner a couple of times a month together.”
“If a great Cuban boxer can get an opportunity like the one you’ve given Rigondeaux here, why aren’t more leaving?”
“More and more they are leaving. It’s a helluva choice to leave your family behind. Let’s see what the kid does Saturday night with as many people as you could possibly ask for watching. I have to run. See you tomorrow for the weigh-in.”
On the following day, Rigondeaux stripped down to his underwear, revealing
an immaculately conditioned physique, and made a point of not bothering to remove his diamond necklace and pendant before he stepped onto the scales. His opponent, the World Boxing Association’s interim champion, Ricardo Cordoba of Panama, took note of the act of defiance without betraying any nerves. Rigondeaux glared with palpable distain out at the audience of reporters and cameras and flexed his biceps as his and his jewelry’s combined weight came in a half pound under the 122-pound super bantamweight limit.
It was all good theater. Yet weigh-ins, more than any other aspect of the lead-up to a fight, always felt like an eerie echo to the slave auctions that imbue boxing’s past. Boxing’s deliverance to both the United States and Cuba arrived through slavery. The first American champion was born a slave. As the weigh-ins after Rigondeaux’s continued and I watched managers chuckle as they helped remove thick gold chains from their fighters’ necks, I wondered how long ago it really was that that masters were doing the same thing with their slaves’ iron collars. In the beginning of boxing, fights were to the death. And once that got played out, you could always round up a dozen of the biggest and strongest slaves you could find and have them fight blind with hoods over their heads and throw coins at the last man standing in a battle royal. The legendary heavyweight champion Jack Johnson began his career that way at the beginning of the twentieth century. And even by 1910, Johnson occasionally fought to a chorus of white fans cheering him on with, “Kill that nigger!” as the bands played “All Coons Look Alike to Me.”
In 1998, for Sports Illustrated, S. L. Price had written of Fidel Castro’s previous “Judas,” Orlando Hernandez, after he’d successfully made it to America: “I applaud Duque’s escape, but I’d rather see him pitch in Havana.” Rigondeaux wanted America’s money, but if he had it his way, he’d rather be fighting and living in Cuba. Rigondeaux hadn’t arrived to Duque’s multimillion-dollar guaranteed contract. He had turned thirty less than two months before his title fight, and at that age, with no established fan base, his fight against Ricardo Cordoba might have been his last shot at winning and earning anywhere near enough money to stay afloat in America. He knew with his talent, had he been born anywhere else but Cuba, an opportunity like this might have been available to him before he had left his teens. He might have earned a few million during the last ten years he’d gone undefeated as an amateur. As with all the Cuban greats before Rigondeaux, nobody could say what they might have accomplished as pros because none of the greats had left Cuba, until he did. Teófilo Stevenson and Félix Savón had each won three Olympic gold medals. Nobody had won more since. Instead of becoming the first human being, let alone Cuban, to win four Olympic medals in boxing, Rigondeaux decided to make his statement to the boxing world in the United States.
“Professionalism is a conspiracy against sports,” Castro said back in 1966. “Professional athletes are the antithesis of sport, a cultural instrument to ruin sports, and only our revolutionary concept of sport will be an instrument to educate our culture, an instrument of well-being.” Later on, after Teófilo Stevenson won Olympic gold against Duane Bobick and the United States in the 1970s, Castro described Stevenson like this: “He gave a good example of what Cuba is. Against millions of dollars. Men’s sacred values are beyond gold and money. It’s impossible to understand this, when you live in a world where everything is bought and sold and gotten through gold.”
On November 13, 2010, Guillermo Rigondeaux defeated Ricardo Cordoba by split decision. The boos began within the first minute and only grew until the verdict of the fight was read and they reached their crescendo. In the final round HBO announcer Jim Lampley summed up Rigondeaux’s performance: “Culturally this is not acceptable for someone to become a boxing star in America fighting this way.” American fans didn’t want Cuban hit-and-don’t-get-hit technical brilliance. Fans wanted brutal knockouts, brains scrambled, blood—they wanted entertainment. Lampley’s fellow announcer, Max Kellerman, chimed in: “Still waiting for El Duque … the El Duque of Cuban boxing to blow in and win the World Series.” Lampley added, “So when he does this, I don’t see a single sold ticket or sold pay-per-view hookup.”
I found out later on from Rigondeaux’s wife in Cuba, Rigondeaux’s biggest opponent that night was thousands of miles away with her. His child was seriously ill and Rigondeaux was powerless to help a son he might lose in Cuba, as he’d lost his mother the previous year. Maybe it was more than a coincidence that Rigondeaux’s greatest professional triumph would also feature the first time in his life—in sparring, as an amateur, or as a professional—that an opponent scored a knockdown against him, as Cordoba did in the sixth round.
After Michael Buffer announced Rigondeaux’s name in victory, someone reached over with a Cuban flag that Rigondeaux held aloft as he was ceremoniously hoisted onto the shoulders of one of his team and paraded around the ring to massive jeers. The booing was depressing, but I was more concerned with the question of exactly which Cuba Rigondeaux now wanted to be viewed as fighting for. The Cuba that existed before Fidel? The Cuba he’d abandoned? Or the Cuba of tomorrow that everyone had been predicting was right around the corner since Castro had taken power back in 1959? However, that Cuba meant something different to everyone who dreamed it.
The most telling difference I saw between how Rigondeaux celebrated his victory that night and how all Cubans who’d resisted or been too afraid to leave their island celebrated their boxing victories was this: Rigondeaux’s defiant individualism. In America he was finally free to be the individual he was never allowed to be in Cuba. As his name was called out to the tens of thousands of paying customers in the audience, Rigondeaux glared at them with contempt. By contrast, in 2000, when Félix Savón fought his last match for Cuba, winning his third Olympic gold, the first thing he did after winning, as he’d done all his career, was look for someone to thank. Savón’s victory could not be separated by his gratitude for all those who had contributed to it. His last words before leaving the ring, blood dripping from under his eye like a tear, were “Gracias Cuba!”
Rigondeaux had earned more money in one fight than Savón would ever see in his lifetime, and he was all alone.
*
“Nothin wounded goes uphill…. It just dont happen,” Cormac McCarthy wrote in No Country For Old Men.
After Rigondeaux’s fight, I got stuck rereading that sentence for a long time on the plane to Havana. For the last three years of my life I’d been obsessed with following a boxer who’d risked everything to step into a smuggler’s boat and join other Cuban athletes in becoming the most expensive human cargo on earth just to have the chance to climb, wounded, toward his dream.
I was in the front row in Dallas when Guillermo Rigondeaux won a world title against Ricardo Cordoba faster than anyone else in the history of boxing. Wayne Newton was sitting next to me. Newton, along with everyone else, booed Rigondeaux out of the stadium. Bob Arum told Gary Hyde after the fight that Rigondeaux would never fight in America again. One of Cuba’s most notorious defectors was going to be forced to become an exile again, just to keep his career going. He hadn’t risked anything. Having Rigondeaux debut on an HBO Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view ended up being like having Chopin open at a Metallica concert. Of twelve fights that night, Rigondeaux’s was the only one fans booed. From insiders I heard that Arum felt he’d been made a fool for lauding the fight so heavily in the press.
This much was true of Rigondeaux and his performance: Few had ever seen anyone look so empty and resentful succeeding at their dream. Mucho and I drove Rigondeaux and his new championship belt back to the hotel from Cowboys Stadium that night. He barely said a word, sitting in the backseat with a girl I’d never seen before. It didn’t seem prudent to ask about her. Looking at his face in the rearview mirror, I asked him if winning a world title felt better in America than winning his first Olympic medal for Cuba. He glared at me and flashed the gold on his front teeth he’d once told me was the result of melting his first Olympic gold medal into his mouth.
&nbs
p; “Of course it’s better in America,” Rigondeaux explained. “They paid me.”
“Does your family still live in the same house?”
“Yes,” Rigondeaux grunted. “In Boyeros.”
“Near the airport?”
Rigondeaux nodded and looked over his new championship belt that was nearly the same size as him.
“Nothin wounded goes uphill …”
*
We touched down on the Havana runway and I saw the José Martí airport, named after the poet Castro claimed was responsible for the last fifty-two years welcoming us. Cubans living in Miami use the same poet’s words to defend its opposition to Castro. And the same poet has a statue at the base of Central Park, which I had walked past the day before, commemorating his time in New York. Even simple things like arriving at an airport here can be jarringly complicated. Too many characters for any drama, let alone one that’s gone on this long. Millions of people picking at the same scab.
So what was I here to do again? Illegally interview Cuban heroes. Interview them on camera. You can’t do anything officially here, unless you know the right officials to bribe. However, most of the Cuban athletes who never sold out probably wanted bribes, too. Bribe them with $100 to tell you how they turned down millions. What’s it worth to meet some of the biggest uncashed human lottery tickets in the world? What’s it worth to have them tell you how they turned down tens or hundreds of millions because of their principles and having nobody in America believe them and dismiss them as brainwashed?
I had a pretty ambitious list of people to interview on camera. A lot of high-profile people. Banned authors. Yoani Sánchez, the controversial blogger whom Time magazine had named one of the most influential people in 2008 and who’d interviewed Obama not long ago. I badly wanted Teófilo Stevenson and Félix Savón to talk to about Rigondeaux. I wanted a teenage boxer, Cristian Martinez, who’d starred in the documentary Sons of Cuba, and whom many people viewed as the next great champion emerging on the island, to offer his take on Rigondeaux’s legacy. Sons of Cuba was the first film for which foreign filmmakers were allowed into the Finca, the elite boxing academy where all of Cuba’s great champions had trained. Plus, if at all possible, I wanted to interview Rigondeaux’s wife and child: the collateral damage. I’d been warned they had two cameras trained on their house 24/7.
A Cuban Boxer's Journey Page 8
