Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > May > 26
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Kellen Winslow to Miami vice — the city that continues to amaze
MIAMI — Over the years in Miami — living and working there through the 1970s and 1980s and visiting almost every year since — I’ve seen some things that surprised me.
Back when Miami vice was often a way of life — not just a TV show — two luxury sports cars collided in an intersection right near my house.
Before the cops got there, both drivers pulled themselves from their battered cars and ran…away.
One car was stolen, the other was packed with kilos of cocaine.
In the sports world, two you-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it moments come to mind. I covered the NFL game now dubbed The Epic in Miami. It was an 1982 AFC Divisional Play-Off game between San Diego and the Dolphins in the steamy Orange Bowl and it’s considered one of the greatest games in NFL history.
The show that Kellen Winslow — now the Central State athletics director, but then the Chargers’ tight end — put on that day wasn’t just surprising. It was unbelievable.
Although he endured a pinched nerve. dehydration, debilitating cramps and a gashed lip that needed to be stitched up, he carried the Chargers to the 41-38 overtime victory by catching 13 passes for 166 yards and a touchdown and blocking Uwe von Schamann’s winning field goal attempt with four seconds left in regulation.
The photo of him with a towel draped over his head, being helped off the field after the game by two teammates is an enduring image of the NFL.
I was covering the Miami Hurricanes game with Boston College in 1984 — in fact I standing right at the edge of the end zone — when a scrambling Doug Flutie heaved a Hail Mary pass from close to mid-field with time running out and somehow BC’s Gerard Phelan gathered in the ball against three Miami defenders to give the Eagles a stunning 47-45 victory.
And yet, what my wife and I saw at the Fontainebleau Hotel this weekend still surprised me.
It turned supermodel Cheryl Tiegs into a wall flower. Popular actor Matt Damon became little more than an afterthought and even 6-foot-10 NBA star Alonzo Mourning was dwarfed.
It became some of the fodder for the story I wrote that appears both in today’s newspaper and elsewhere on this web page.
It’s about boxing’s future and the past coming together Friday night at the fabled Miami Beach Hotel. And with legends Roberto Duran and Jake LaMotta in the crowd and four trumpeted Cuban defectors — led by two-time Olympic gold medal winner Guillermo Rigondeaux — up in the ring, the fight crowd showered its affection on nothing else.
TweetCOLUMN: “Night of Legends” Creates a Stir
MIAMI — It was a pretty unbelievable scene.
At one ringside table in the Fontainebleau Hotel ballroom sat Alonzo Mourning, one of the most celebrated figures in Miami sports history.
The 16-year NBA veteran and seven-time All-Star played most of his career with the Miami Heat and helped them win an NBA title. Less than two months ago, he became the first Heat player ever to have his number retired and now his charitable foundation is huge in South Florida.
Yet Friday night, May 23, he sat there in his wine-colored shirt and fancy straw fedora and was all but ignored by the crowd.
Two tables away, supermodel Cheryl Tiegs — whose face has graced the covers of magazines like Vogue, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Time and three Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues — wasn’t creating much of a stir either.
And it wasn’t much different for Matt Damon or Kourtney Kardashian at their ringside perches.
This evening was billed “The Night of Legends” but none of the above qualified. Not with this crowd. Not up against the two aging guys sitting at the table between Mourning or Tiegs.
The Fontainebleau — that glitzy Miami Beach hotel where Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley Jackie Gleason Sammy Davis Jr. and Bob Hope once were regulars and movies like Goldfinger and Scarface were shot — reopened six months ago after a $1 billion renovation.
Friday night it hosted an ESPN televised fight show that not only featured four trumpeted Cuban boxers who had recently defected — including two-time Olympic gold medal winner Guillermo Rigondeaux — but also honored Roberto Duran and Jake LaMotta.
DURAN STEALS SHOW
Never mind that Duran, now just a few weeks shy of 58, looks, as someone noted, more like Buddy Hackett than the steaming, petulant Hands of Stone, who knocked out 70 men in 119 fights and won world titles at four different weights.
He was THE center of attention Friday.
And the cowboy-hatted LaMotta — now 87 and far from his Raging Bull Days — held nearly as much sway. He and Duran are boxing Hall of Famers and with this crowd, they were gods.
All night long people streamed to their table seeking photos and autographs and especially a snippet of conversation. Duran especially obliged.
Some 32 years ago here at the Fontainebleau — when he was the coal-haired prince of machismo — I saw him retain his lightweight title with a 13th-round knock-out of Vilomar Fernandez. After that I covered several of his fights in Miami, Las Vegas, even Cleveland.
I’ve listened to him regale late-night tippers at at Caesars Palace lounge with outrageous stories about his pet lion. I’ve seen him take the stage in a Miami nightclub and play the bongo drums with the band and, of course, I know the story about the time an opponent’s irate mom jumped into the ring and tried to clobber him with her stiletto heels. She got kayoed, too.
Duran did things on his terms — and though they sometimes had an edge to them — he became one of my favorite fight personalties.
Friday night he sat with Frankie Otero, whose family fled Cuba for Miami when Fidel Castro came to power. He became a top ten lightweight himself in the early 1970s and was local favorite here.
The Fontainebleau always was a magnet for fighters. Beau Jack — the lightweight champ of the 1940s who headlined Madison Square Garden a record 21 times — shined shoes here after his career.
“Don’t have no pity on me,” he once told me. “I’ve been the champion of the world — been to the top of the mountain — and I met a lot of nice people along the way. I’ve worked hard all my life and I’m doing honest work now.”
Levi Forte — known as The Battling Bellman — still totes bags at the Fontainebleau . He’s worked at the hotel 45 years and he boxed more than 30 of them. He was Muhammad Ali’s sparring partner, fought George Chuvalo twice , Floyd Patterson once and — in 1969 — he became the first man to go 10 rounds with George Foreman, who gave him four broken ribs.
Forte came to Friday night’s show to see the four Cuban fighters, three of whom were making their pro debuts. All had impressive amateur careers and even more enthralling stories of flight from Cuba.
NO TURNING BACK
Rigondeaux had disappeared from the Cuban national team with fellow boxer Erislandy Lara, a welterweight world champ, at the 2007 Pan Am Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Two weeks later, Brazilian police picked them up and the fighters then said they hadn’t planned to defect and wanted to return home.
A German promoter — who said he signed them to five-year contract during their disappearance — claimed the only reason they agree to return was because Cuban authorities were threatening their families.
Once back in Cuba, the pair felt the wrath of Fidel Castro himself who wrote in an essay for Granma, the regime’s propaganda paper:
“They have reached a point of no return as members of a Cuban boxing team. An athlete who abandons his team is like a soldier who abandons his fellow troops in the middle of combat.”
The two were no longer permitted to fight and soon after Lara escaped again, this time on a speedboat to Mexico.
Rigondeaux finally fled in February — leaving a wife and two kids — with two other boxers Yudel Johnson and Yordanis Despaigne, both former Olympians.
The three won their debuts Friday and Lara upped his pro record to 6-0.
Meanwhile the Cuban national team is feeling the effects of so many defections in recent years. For the first time since 1968 — not counting the two Games it boycotted — Cuba failed to win a boxing gold medal at the Beijing Olympics last summer.
Four Cuban fighters who left the island have won pro titles and many think the 28-year-old Rigondeaux is the best of the lot.
“I have won more than 400 amateur fights so I consider myself more of a professional,” Rigondeaux said as the crowd celebrated his three-round TKO victory with unfurled Cuban flags and the chant “Coo-ba… Coo-ba… Coo-ba.”
And had he looked out into the clamoring masses just then, he would have spotted one very tall man in a fedora pointing a cell phone in his direction.
Alonzo Mourning wanted to capture this moment with a photo of his own.
Tweet
