Germany
Ray Sanchez | Direct from Havana
7:16 AM EDT, June 13, 2008
HAVANA
The latest boxing defection caught two-time Olympic bantamweight
champion Guillermo Rigondeaux like a solid uppercut to the chin.
When a visitor Thursday night showed Rigondeaux a photo of former
teammate Erislandy Lara, 25, posing with his new boxing promoter in
Germany, the man considered the island's top fighter sunk into his sofa.
"I wish him the best," he said softly. "Boxing is all we know. We spent
our lives fighting."
Lara, the 2005 welterweight world champion, and the 27-year-old
Rigondeaux disappeared last July during the Pan American Games in Rio de
Janeiro. Hamburg-based Arena Box Promotion announced that it had signed
them to five-year contracts, and the German embassy in Brazil reported
that both men had applied for visas. The athletes were arrested,
however, for overstaying their Brazilian visas and returned to Cuba.
Their boxing careers appeared over.
Rigondeaux and Lara insisted they never intended to defect. But ailing
former President Fidel Castro wrote in an essay that Rigondeaux and Lara
had sold out their teammates and their country. The boxers "had reached
the point of no return" with the national boxing team, Castro said.
When the boxing team competing in the Beijing summer Olympics was
announced, Lara and Rigondeaux weren't on it.
Rigondeaux said he never heard from Cuban boxing officials after his
return home last August. He was paid his monthly athlete's salary of $19
only once. He said Lara suffered a similar fate.
"I'm not doing anything right now," Rigondeaux said Thursday night. "If
they don't tell me something soon, I start looking for work. I don't
know what, but I'll have to invent something to do."
In Hamburg this week, Arena executive Ahmet Oner announced that Lara
illegally left Cuba on a speedboat and reached Mexico. The boxer
traveled to Germany on a provisional passport and signed a professional
contract for an undisclosed sum. Oner offered no more on Lara's escape,
saying: "We don't want to endanger anybody."
Lara, who will likely fight in the middleweight division, is to make his
pro debut July 4th in Istanbul.
"I don't want to talk about the details of my escape," Lara said in a
statement from Arena. "I am looking forward to turning professional and
becoming champion of the world."
Lara's defection surprised Rigondeaux, but added, "People don't talk
about those things."
Rigondeaux said he has struggled to support his family since his boxing
career in Cuba ended almost one year ago. The Mitsubishi sedan awarded
to him by the state for winning gold at the 2000 Sidney Olympics is
parked outside because he has no money for gas.
"We get by like most Cubans," said Rigondeaux, sitting in the living
room of his modest Havana apartment, two walls adorned with medals and
trophies from his boxing career. "We struggle, we improvise. We do what
we can."
Rigondeaux said he had low expectations for Cuba's Olympic boxing squad.
Cuba won five gold medals in Athens in 2004 but three title winners –
Yan Barthelemy, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Odlanier Solis – later defected and
signed with Arena.
"I know the fighters," Rigondeaux said of the current Olympic boxing
squad. "Let's see what they do. It's not a very strong team."
He seemed to recover from the news of Lara's defection. Will Rigondeaux
box again?
"They'll come knocking on the door at some point," he said of Cuban
boxing authorities. "You watch."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-0613havanadaily,0,1800786.column
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