American Son
Page 7
I was hurt that it was him because we had become good friends during the time we trained together. When we later talked about it, I laughed because I didn’t want to show him that deep down, it had gotten to me. I wasn’t going to tell him Veronica had been the woman of my dreams and he destroyed what we had.
I was never able to resume my relationship with her. She was a really good person who hadn’t previously been exposed to that kind of thing and this whole episode was so strange to her that she didn’t really want to deal with it.
It took me years to get over her, but once I did, all hell broke loose as far as my relationship with women was concerned.
As for Veronica, I didn’t have the chance to see her around school again because, with my amateur career kicking into high gear, I was on the road most of the time. I did my schoolwork under the supervision of tutors in the various cities in which I competed.
Veronica crept back into my mind three years later on my way back from Barcelona after winning the gold. I imagined her in the crowd, waiting to greet me.
There was indeed a huge crowd to herald my return, but no Veronica. That’s when I was finally able to relegate her to the past. I thought to myself, The hell with it. Look at all that I have now. Veronica? I can get five just like her if I want.
If I had stayed with Veronica, maybe I would have ended up with her and would not be with Millie. I believe things happen for a reason.
I finally saw Veronica again several years ago at the home of a mutual friend. She’s happy, married, and has kids. We said hi, laughed, and reminisced about the good old days. She told me she was happy for me, for what I had accomplished, and I told her I was happy her life turned out the way it did.
But I never told her the phone call was a prank.
While Veronica was constantly on my mind during those high school years, so were the Olympics. Remember, Paul Gonzales, who had won Olympic gold in 1984, was training at Resurrection. When he would enter the gym, it was like the president had arrived. His trainer, Al Stankie, would march in first and yell out, “Clear the place. Paul Gonzales is coming in.”
As a kid, you are in awe watching a guy you have seen win the gold on TV sparring in the flesh right in front of you. If that didn’t inspire you, nothing would.
My training was soon taken over by Manuel Montiel, a real character. He would sit on a stool in the middle of the ring with his mitt in the air for the kids to punch with their gloves. He loved to drink, so when one of the trainers would announce he was going out for a beer run, Montiel would reach into his pocket with his free hand to count his change while the kids slugged away at the mitt in his other hand. It was a hilarious sight.
One day, I said good-bye to Resurrection. I didn’t know what had happened, but I was being transferred to a gym in downtown L.A. owned by Carl Damé, head of a construction company, and I didn’t ask questions. My father said I was switching gyms, so I switched.
Marty Denkin, a familiar boxing figure in Southern California who has served as a referee, a member of the California State Athletic Commission, and has been in several boxing movies, was a recruiter for the downtown gym. I later found out Marty had paid Montiel $1,500 to release me.
I certainly didn’t get any of it. Nor did I sign anything because I wasn’t going to endanger my amateur status.
I liked the gym, but it was a hassle for me to get there. I had to take a bus, and the trip took ninety minutes each way. I was traveling alone, coming home at night when it could be dangerous.
The solution was simple. I was sixteen and had gotten my driver’s license. All I needed was a car. The people at the gym, anxious to keep me, agreed to get me some wheels.
I may have been a star on the amateur circuit, but I was like any other teenager when it came to getting his first car. I was fired up.
In all, gym officials were going to give out three cars to their three prime fighters. One would go to Reggie Johnson, who had won a world title. Another to a promising Mexican fighter, a professional who had had five or six fights. The third car was to be mine. Johnson was given the money for a BMW. The Mexican pro got an almost-new Camaro. The third car was a torn-up, old Mercury.
Marty told me my car was that broken-down piece of junk.
I was heartbroken, my jaw dropping as I looked at that hunk of rusting metal. My father looked at me, looked at Marty, and began to fume.
I knew the routine by now. My father told me to pack up my gear because, once again, we were moving on.
IX
NOISE MONITOR FOR BUDWEISER
I wasn’t always the Golden Boy.
My attempts to earn money before I became a boxing star were embarrassing.
When I was about nine or ten, there was this older guy at the Ayudate gym—a kid around 12—who told me he was making good money selling ice-cream bars called paletas from a cart he would push around the neighborhood, ringing the cart’s bell to let people know the paletas had arrived. My friend wanted to know if I wanted a cart of my own.
I said, sign me up. He told me I had to show up at this warehouse at six o’clock the next morning. That meant missing school, but all I could see were coins dancing in my head. Who needed school if I could become rich?
I met him after my morning run and was given fifty paletas and a cart to stuff them in. I was to sell the paletas for fifty cents each, with half going back to the dealer and the other half in my pocket.
Great deal. That meant I could make $12.50 for the day. Big money for me.
I knew I had to be careful planning my route, making sure I didn’t go anyplace where I might be spotted by someone who knew me, especially my mother. After all, I was cutting school.
I figured out a route that would get me to one rival school in the neighborhood by breakfast and another by lunch. This was going to be easy money.
By the time I pushed my cart out of the warehouse, it was almost eight. An hour went by. Nothing, not a single sale. Another hour. Still nothing. People would say, it’s too early, too cold, too expensive, too whatever.
I remained full of energy, still thinking I was going to sell all the paletas.
Another hour went and I was starting to get hungry. The hungrier I got, the better those paletas looked. Maybe, I thought, I’d eat one. Just one. It would be my lunch and I’d still have a profit of $12.25. Boy, it tasted good.
I pulled up to a school at lunchtime, parked my cart by the gate, and rubbed my hands in anticipation. It was getting really hot. Surely I would clean up now.
Still nothing and I was still hungry, so I ate another paleta. Down a dollar.
Enough with the schools already. I decided to go to a car wash where I’d find older people, people with money. I sold five paletas there. All right, I figured, I was rolling.
There were only a few hours left, and again, I couldn’t find any customers. Depressed, I ate another paleta.
I lost track of how many I wound up eating, but by the time I brought the cart back to the warehouse, I owed them fifty cents.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t a great salesman. Next, I tried washing dishes on the weekend at a restaurant owned by my aunts. That seemed simple enough. I would get paid with coins: pennies, nickels, and dimes. At the end of the day, it came out to three dollars or maybe three and a half.
The problem was, we would all sit down after work—my aunts, cousins, a few other people in the restaurant—and play dominoes for money. And I usually wound up losing everything I had earned.
When I was sixteen, I finally got a job that paid me decent money. Because I was an Olympic prospect by then, I qualified for an employment opportunity through USA Boxing, the sport’s national governing body for amateurs.
I got $900 every two weeks for working for Budweiser, an Olympic sponsor, at their San Fernando Valley plant. At first they didn’t have anything for me to do. I would walk around and say hello to the employees and that was about it. I was so bored, I would find a deserted area and sleep for two hours.
I went ten steps and judged the noise level at a five. After ten more steps, I figured it was down to a four, and so on. I did that all day, but I never wrote down where I had been standing. I just turned in a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers on it.
They didn’t care. It was better than paying me to sleep.
I finally began to make some serious money as I moved up the ladder in the amateur ranks. I might get $1,000 or $1,500 for winning a tournament, all allowable under the rules. The most I ever made was $2,500. I gave some of my earnings to my family and some I spent on a brand-new camera, a bike, a jukebox, and some clothes.
I was on my way to a highly lucrative career. Not bad for a guy who started out eating up all the profits.
X
SHYSTERS ON MY DOORSTEP
Amateur to pro?
Gold medal to Golden Boy?
There was no question in anybody’s mind that one would follow the other, that I would cash in on my success, take advantage of the fame and fortune that beckoned to me, and pursue championship belts with all the resolve and vigor I had demonstrated on the long path to Barcelona.
Not necessarily.
What was a foregone conclusion in everybody else’s mind wasn’t even a strong likelihood in mine. Honestly, I didn’t want to continue fighting in the days immediately following Barcelona. What for? I had fulfilled my dream. I did it for my mother and that’s it.
What would I do? I wasn’t sure. I was really into architecture—I’ve always liked drawing, creating something—so I was playing around with the idea of going back to school and taking drafting classes. I had been in a few of those in the past and had developed a passion for putting visions on paper. It intrigued me.
Everybody around me continued to whisper in my ear that I had to go on in boxing, my father being the loudest, but I remained unconvinced, content to soak it all in and continue considering my options.
Having put so much of myself into my quest for gold, maybe I just needed a little time to step back.
Then one day, I woke up and felt like my mother was talking to me again, this time telling me to continue boxing. I can’t really describe how it happens, but I often feel like my mother has guided me.
I wasn’t thinking of a long career in the ring, certainly nothing like the one I’ve been fortunate to have. I just wanted to win a world title. A single title. That would be my dream, fulfilled separately from the one my mother and I shared. Get a world-championship belt to match my medal, make a few dollars, get out, maybe buy a house, become an architect, and live happily ever after.
The most money I could ever have imagined making in the ring? Maybe $50,000.
Believe me, I had no idea my life would turn out the way it has. Never in my wildest dreams could I have foreseen this.
Even before I decided to turn pro, I had calls left and right from everybody and their mother in boxing, from Don King to Bob Arum, to just about every other promoter and manager in the business, to those who were first trying to get into the business. Mostly, they called on the phone, including King. How they got my number, I have no idea.
At that point my father and I weren’t sitting around, waiting for the next knock, saying to each other, “Okay, we won the gold. How much money can we make?”
One of those pursuing me was a fight manager named Shelly Finkel. He had been around even before I went to Barcelona, telling me he would help me out with whatever I needed.
I thought, Cool.
Shelly wasn’t just talk. He gave me money on occasion for living expenses, for shoes to run, equipment to use, which was more than any of the others did.
When Evander Holyfield fought Buster Douglas in 1990 at the Mirage in Vegas, my father and I were Shelly’s guests at the fight. Before the opening bell, my father, with tears in his eyes, pulled Shelly aside and told him my mother was seriously ill with cancer and he didn’t have money for the medical bills. Shelly gave my father what he needed and later paid for him, several other family members, and Robert Alcazar to go to the Olympics.
Shelly also paid the funeral expenses for my mother. In all, he laid out about $100,000. I was extremely grateful and felt obligated to him. I thought, This is the nicest man I’ve met as an amateur. He’s done a lot for me. Of course I’m going to go with him if I turn pro. Why wouldn’t I?
I didn’t know Shelly had paid for the funeral. That generous act wasn’t relayed to me until years later. Just another example of being shielded, by my father and Robert, from the kind of information that would have enabled me to be more involved in key decisions early in my career. If I had been aware of the funeral arrangement, I would have signed with Shelly in a heartbeat.
Instead, a mob of opportunity seekers descended upon me after I brought home the gold, elbowing their way into my face with evermore-fabulous offers. Everybody had a big-deal, million-dollar contract and all sorts of other things. Each guy told me his deal was better than that of every other guy I had talked to.
I was naive, out there having a good time and not worrying about any of it. I left it up to Robert and my father.
Robert made the decision to turn Shelly down. Robert felt the $200,000 he was offering wasn’t enough. Shelly also said he would match any other offer we received, but Robert thought we should continue to field offers. Robert was the brains behind my operation at that point. He had been a fighter, so when he warned me about the pitfalls of going with the wrong people, I listened.
We eventually repaid Shelly the $100,000 he had given my family.
Ultimately, Robert decided we should go with fight managers Robert Mittleman and Steve Nelson. They were offering a million dollars in the form of a house in Montebello, a car, and some cash, Robert told me, plus $250,000 for my first fight. Included would be $75,000 for my father and $25,000 for Robert.
My eyes got as big as saucers. Remember, I was still a nineteen-year-old who was happy if he had beer money.
The coup de grâce was the car.
They had found my weakness. A car had been a deal breaker for my father and me at Marty Denkin’s gym, it was the way my future business adviser, Mike Hernández, would lure me in, and again, it was an attractive selling point in the case of Mittleman and Nelson. They got me a brand-new 1993 Acura NFX, a sharp sports car.
When I saw that car, I figured, This is it.
I soon learned Mittleman and Nelson, lacking the money to back up their offer, had asked Bob Arum to share some of the expense with the stipulation that Bob would become my promoter.
They went to see him at a house he was renting in Malibu. When Bob agreed to put up $250,000, Mittleman got so excited he stripped off his shirt, ran down to the water, and, with the rest of his clothes still on, jumped into the ocean.
When Mittleman and Nelson first told me they would manage my career and take care of me financially, I started to think I could make a lot of money as a professional fighter. I told myself, This could be the start of something good.
I did get the house, but the car was leased, and my first professional purse was only around $40,000.
Throughout my relationship with Mittleman and Nelson, it seemed I was always getting some of what they owed me with a promise that the rest was on the way.
I signed a contract with them in September of 1992, with my first fight scheduled for November 23 at the Forum in Inglewood. It was exciting to know I was going to be a prizefighter, going to test myself against the best in the world.
My first opponent, Lamar Williams, may not have been in that category, but the credentials of the Erie, Pennsylvania, lightweight were much more impressive than those normally associated with a fighter selected for a big name looking to make a big splash in his pro debut. Williams was 5–1–1. And he
was twenty-four, a grizzled veteran from the perspective of a nineteen-year-old like me.
Hardly a tomato can awaiting me in the ring.
I may have been unhappy that I hadn’t timely received all the promised money from Mittleman and Nelson, but they scored points with me, nonetheless, by the expenditures they made to prepare me for the match, elaborate compared to my amateur days. For a six-round fight, they sent me up to Big Bear for six weeks, got me a cabin, a chef to cook my meals, a gym run by Larry Goossen to work out in, and sparring partners, who included Gabriel Ruelas, a future champion.
Sparring with pros was nothing new for me. Remember, I had been doing that since my early teens in the Resurrection Gym.
Switching from an amateur style, geared to pile up points in a complicated scoring system, to a pro style, where power and finesse can be better integrated, was also no problem for me. I preferred the pro style from the beginning. It was tougher for me to switch to the amateur method for the Olympics than it was to switch back for the pros.
I didn’t study Williams’s style as I would do against opponents later in my career. I didn’t look at a tape of his previous fights, didn’t even know if any existed. Robert and I just concentrated on me, on my style, on doing what had been successful for me in the past, and doing it for a longer time. Remember, I was used to fighting three rounds in the amateurs. Now I might have to double that workload. That was the biggest concern.
I trained hard for that fight. It may have been only six rounds, but the hype was what you might expect for a championship match. I didn’t feel any pressure as fight time approached. Knowing that a loss at the Olympics would have destroyed my mother’s dream…that was pressure. To this day, with all the big fights I have had, I have never again felt pressure like that.
Heading into the pros, I was thinking more about how much easier my life, and the lives of family members, would be now that I was going to make some money. The pressure of winning as a pro didn’t sink in until later.