IN MY OPINION
Unbeaten Cuban boxer Gamboa fighting for himself, family and freedom
BY DAN LE BATARD
dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com
Salsa crackles over the speakers, fighting to be heard above all the
punches. Speed bags. Heavy bags. This is the music to which Yuriorkis
Gamboa has always danced, the soundtrack to his life since the Cuban
government started programming him to be a fighter. It makes sense that
this tiny champion with firecrackers in his fists would train now on
Calle Ocho, the street where Miami and Cuba most famously intersect. He
represents one of the few things the rotting island he fled is still
fertile enough to export to our country -- hunger.
Gamboa is The Next Big Little Thing in boxing. Fifteen fights. All
victories. Thirteen knockouts. Nine within two rounds. He is the interim
World Boxing Association featherweight champion, and the buzz is
building. Four of his fights have been on ESPN, two on HBO, one on
Showtime. His boxing journey began with daily training from 4 to 7 p.m.
That's when he was 6. Then he left his family entirely to train 25 days
out of every month. That's when he was 9.
But such is the plight of the Cuban athlete: The Olympic gold medal
Gamboa won in 2004? He had to sell it for cash to help his family. On
international trips, he wouldn't use the hotel soap. He would hide a bar
a day and horde the replacements so that he could bring it all back
home. Thirteen people lived in his house in Cuba -- abuela, parents,
cousins -- and they didn't own a car between them. Gamboa brought Cuba
glory with his fists and fame, but he didn't realize just how little his
country was giving him back until talking to boxers from other countries.
''One told me he got three cars, two houses, cash and gold,'' Gamboa
says in Spanish. ``There were guys I was killing. They were losing to
me, and I couldn't afford their sandals.''
He decided to defect when he was denied per diem one day while training
in Venezuela. Ten dollars. That's what cost Cuba its champion. Gamboa
used to buy trinkets in other countries with that per diem that he would
bring back home and resell as part of his hustle. Can you image that
here? An Olympic champion hawking souvenirs on a street corner while in
his prime? Denied his 10 dollars one day in 2006, he got into a cab at 5
a.m., and left behind everything and everyone he loved without knowing
if and when he would see any of them again.
''All he ever got for being champion was a telephone,'' his father says.
A cellphone?
``No, a telephone for our house.''
His father is here now. That's one of the things Gamboa is doing with
his money, bringing over the love he left. Ten thousand dollars at a
time, he has paid to have seven family members and friends whisked off
the island by boat. He began doing it when he would win a fight on TV,
get picked up on shoulders and still feel ''empty and sad,'' in his
words, ``because the people around me celebrating weren't the people who
should have been around me celebrating.''
SHARING WITH DAD
Gamboa's father remains lost in this country as his life here is little
more than home-gym-home (''I'm learning to walk,'' the old man says
before correcting himself. ''Crawl. Crawl and hope to walk.'') But the
father came because his son said he needed him. There wasn't more of an
explanation required than that.
''To share,'' the son says.
The boxer sobbed when his 2-year-old daughter arrived. He was supposed
to hide in the car to surprise her, but couldn't help himself. He burst
out and came running the moment he saw the back of his little girl from
afar. ''Papito!'' she yelled upon seeing him. When trying to articulate
how that felt, starting his new life in this country with his daughter
finally in his arms, this bone-tough fighter wipes a finger at a tear
forming in the corner of his eye, turns his face away and uses one of
the few English words he knows.
''Wow,'' he says.
He has fought 15 times in less than two years, a ridiculous amount for a
fighter of his pedigree, because there is so much catching up to do.
Being an undefeated conqueror is just a starting point, not a finish
line. Gamboa, 27, has started Ciclone Promotions with local promoter
Henry Rivalta and plans to build an empire. Coffee, cigars, champions --
that's what Cuba exports. So Cuban champions Sullivan Barrera and
Humberto Savigne defected and are already on the team here, and Gamboa
promises more are on the way now that the path to freedom has been blazed.
''We were prisoners in Cuba,'' he says. ``Tourists had access to things
we didn't have. I didn't think I'd ever see my family and friends again.
Now we can do this together here.''
The heavy afternoon air is musty with the scent of sweat absorbed by
every pore of Rivalta's Top Level gym.
The grunts coming from under all that dreadlocked hair over there belong
to giant Shannon Briggs, former heavyweight champ. Barrera is off in a
corner, trying to find his way. He has only been here a couple of
months, and he can't stop thinking about the 3-year-old daughter he left
behind.
''She keeps asking me when I'm coming back,'' he says. ``She keeps
telling people to take her to her father -- that I'm the only one who
knows how to bathe her and make her dinner.''
He calls and tells her that he is buying her dolls, but she is biting
her nails and crying too much and has been to four psychiatrists.
''It is trauma,'' he says.
As he crossed a bridge in Mexico to defect, Barrera immediately called
Gamboa and began weeping. It was not joy as he sprinted toward his future.
''I already miss my daughter,'' he wailed.
They fought for their country once; now they fight for their families
and for themselves.
A LONELY PURSUIT
It is a lonely pursuit in a lonely sport -- boring repetition hitting a
bag and jumping rope and those 10-mile runs to simply start the training
day. Rare is the sane man who chooses to make his living this way,
stepping into a ring stripped down to nothing but his courage.
Gamboa has won already, no matter what happens from here; Barrera is
just starting the kind of long fight so many people in Miami know too
well. He need only look at his lifelong friend across the gym to know
what is possible.
But on this weekend when America celebrates its independence, both men
give the same answer when asked what awed them most upon arrival in in
the country.
''Freedom,'' they say.
Unbeaten Cuban boxer Gamboa fighting for himself, family and freedom -
Columnists - MiamiHerald.com (4 July 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/columnists/v-fullstory/story/1127663.html
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