Ex-Boxer Edwin Viruet Says He Was Robbed - NYTimes.com:
He Was a Contender
By COREY KILGANNON
EDWIN VIRUET does not have to talk about what he accomplished in the ring. His career lies laminated on a small ringside table that stakes out the spot where he trains fighters at John’s Boxing Gym in the South Bronx.
Clippings and grainy photographs and promotion posters attesting to Mr. Viruet’s 31 victories during his professional lightweight career are protected by clear tape from the blood and sweat and spit. One shot shows his fist smashing the face of the great champion Roberto Durán, whom he fought twice. There he is carried on shoulders after winning a lightweight title in Puerto Rico.
“That’s a beautiful record right there,” he said Wednesday in the gym packed with fighters sparring, skipping rope, shadow-boxing and pounding the bags.
As for his six supposed losses and two draws, the real explanation cannot be seen on the table. It falls to Mr. Viruet himself to offer an explanation. They were not really losses, but rather fights he says were fixed against him — especially his two close fights against Mr. Durán in the 1970s, the second for the world lightweight title. The judges’ decisions for Mr. Durán in both fights were disputed by people other than just Mr. Viruet.
Back then, Mr. Viruet fought at 135 pounds. Now he weighs in at 210. He subsists on food stamps and Social Security benefits, and rents a $400-a-month room in an apartment near the gym. He lives on the fumes of his beautiful record.
There was the victory over Alfredo Escalera, a featherweight champion, and the one over Vilomar Fernandez, who had beaten the great Alexis Arguello. But now we arrive at the 1971 draw with Saoul Mamby — which Mr. Viruet says should have been a win. Once again he was robbed, he said, and other fighters and promoters avoided setting up fights with him. It all got so frustrating that he decided to end his career with a statement: He took $5,000 to step into the ring with a lesser fighter named Alvin Hayes in Detroit in 1983 and, he says, he took a first-round dive.
“That was it,” he said, miming a wiping clean of his hands. “My message was, ‘What do I need to win? Shoot the other guy with a gun?’ ”
On it goes — Mr. Viruet can pummel you with this stuff for 15 rounds.
The Puerto Rican-born Mr. Viruet grew up in New York City, one of four boxing brothers, including Adolfo, also an illustrious pro who fought Mr. Durán as well as Sugar Ray Leonard. Growing up on the Lower East Side, Edwin and Adolfo would spar at a boys’ club and fight each other on the sidewalk for money.
Edwin was undefeated as an amateur, with 18 wins and Golden Gloves titles in 1968 and 1969 — when he and Adolfo met in the finals and were declared co-champions. While Adolfo was more of a slugger, Edwin was a dancing stylist who patterned himself after Muhammad Ali.
As a teenager, Edwin began training at Gleason’s Gym, which at the time was in the Bronx, next to where John’s is now.
Like many former fighters, Mr. Viruet only feels right in a busy gym. So he shows up every day, though he lacks the large following of the dozen other trainers at this first-floor space in a graffiti-strewn building on Westchester Avenue.
The place calls itself home to current champions like Joseph Agbeko and Joshua Clottey, and colorful trainers like Understanding Allah. Mr. Viruet knocks around, waiting for his next budding champ, or next payday, to walk in.
He trained Alex Stewart during the heavyweight’s ascent, before he fell to the likes of Holyfield, Tyson and Foreman. He prepared Wesley Snipes for fight scenes in the 1986 film“Streets of Gold,” and even snagged a cameo. When the mobster Salvatore Gravano, widely known as Sammy the Bull, wanted to take up boxing, he paid Mr. Viruet good money to play patty-cake in the sparring ring with him. “He was a cupcake,” laughed Mr. Viruet, who bides his time by training amateur fighters, many of whom lack the money to pay him.
Last week, Mr. Viruet agreed to watch a YouTube replay of his second Durán fight, the 15-rounder in 1977, on a laptop propped up on a car hood outside the gym. Suddenly, there was Howard Cosell, in his yellow blazer, declaring that “each man genuinely hates the other,” and noting that their 10-rounder in 1975 ended in a decision for Mr. Durán that was booed.
“One of the classiest boxers you’d want to see,” Mr. Cosell said of Mr. Viruet as the lithe fighter danced around his plodding opponent and taunted him.
The money Mr. Viruet earned is gone now, he said, but not the pleasure of watching himself punch Mr. Durán’s face open in the 12th round. “I’m the only fighter who cut him,” he crowed into the Bronx night, with the No. 5 train clattering by.
Good Video at NYT's site:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/12/03/nyregion/100000001205187/a-lucky-and-unlucky-contender.html
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