As boxing hits the canvas Cubans vow to rise again

Word was out last summer that the Cubans were going to be trimmed in Houston. Amateur boxing had been struggling since the Olympic games in Seoul in 1988 where Korean boxers suddenly seemed to have taken a quantum leap in standards. Boxing officials believe that around 20 fights were fixed in Seoul, the most talked about being that of Roy Jones who was beaten by an unknown and neverto-be-heard-of-again local boy called Park Si-Hun.

Park received such a beating from Jones that some observers believed that the fight should have been stopped. The Russian and Hungarian judges awarded Jones the fight by four or five points. But Hiouad Larbi from Morocco and Albert Duran of Uruguay scored the bout 59-58 for Park, while Bob Kasule of Uganda scored it 5959, advantage to Park. Duran and Kasule, both suspended for incompetence earlier in the competition, had inexplicably been brought back to referee the more important final.

Amateur boxing in essence had become corrupt. In Barcelona, the judges proved that they were not incompetent when they rightfully awarded Oscar de la Hoya the gold medal, but they left light flyweight Eric Griffin to accept one of the worst decisions of the games. In his fight against Spain's Rafael Lozano in the second round, Griffin out-pointed the hometown fighter 19-9, 189, 26-17, 8-5 and 10-9, but lost the bout because the judges had not pressed the buttons on their computers at the same time, as they were required to do to register a point.

It took the independent mind of the former head of world tennis, Philippe Chatrier, to suggest to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the sport was beyond redemption. But an IOC investigation subsequently found that there was no evidence which proved that any of the judges were bribed.

It was clear that the IOC had little stomach to clean up the sport, short of sending observers to watch the bouts and report back in private. No dissent was tolerated from the boxers. They either gave up or turned professional. Not the Cubans.

The windowless bunker called the George R Brown Convention Centre in downtown Houston was the venue for the 1999 World Championships. The best boxer in the world, heavyweight Felix Savon, was out to do two things. He wanted to avenge the defeat he suffered at the hands of the Uzbek fighter Ruslan Chagayev two years previously in the World Championships and to win the tournament.

Savon had lost to Chagayev in 1997 but it transpired that his opponent had previously fought professionally in a number of fights in Chicago under an assumed name and was stripped of the title.

The Cuban stepped into the ring in Houston and battered Chagayev 9-1 for a place in the final. No dispute. Savon, with six World Championship belts already, was poised to win his seventh against American Michael Bennet, a convicted armed robber who had served seven years of a 15-year stretch before discovering a new life through God and boxing.

Savon had lost count of the offers made to him over the years to turn professional. His shoulders were greasy from the pawing, his back weary of the slaps. Throughout his near-perfect career he has been pursued by scouts, promoters, middlemen, managers and gangsters, all promising millions of dollars to abandon Cuba. Strangers had squeezed blank contracts into his hands, he was once offered $5 million just to defect, he was promised cars, houses and a crack at Mike Tyson.

"I don't like professional boxing," Savon said. "There is a tremendous difference between Olympic-style and professional boxing. In professional ranks, the athlete is not at all. They don't take care of him and the main interest is making money. It is a very dirty sport."

Savon, at 32, continues to majestically lord over a sport he has dominated since 1985. He has not lost a significant world title in the ring since then. In the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, he won his 91-kilo final bout against Canadian David Defagbon 20-2. In Barcelona he defeated Nigeria's David Izonritei 14-1 for the gold medal. But in Houston the Cubans feared that even Savon could be robbed.

It started with American flyweight Brian Viloria and Cuba's reigning Olympic and World Champion Maikro Romero. The American was given the fight 9-2 to howls of derision from the Cuban camp.

Juan Hernandez, the fighter whom Michael Carruth defeated in Barcelona for the gold medal, was next. Hernandez, a double Olympic silver medallist, was seen not only to out-box but also physically dominate his Russian opponent Timur Gaidalov for three of the four rounds. The Russian's hand was raised at the end of the bout.

The dumbfounded rage erupted at ringside as a bewildered Hernandez, sitting on the canvas, looked around the bleak arena in shock as almost all of the watching nationalities, including some Americans, began a cacophony of slow hand clapping and chants of "Cuba, Cuba, Cuba". The police muscled in to take control, cleared the ring and restored order before the last scheduled fight of the night between Savon and Bennett.

But in the darkness at the back of the hall a commotion attracted attention. The statuesque Savon was surrounded by his team-mates and coaches, his eyes ablaze, his blue head protection fixed and in place. But he had no intention of competing.

Head coach Alcides Sagarrra was beside him holding the blue, white and red Cuban flag in both hands and leading the team on a march down the centre aisle in protest at the cheating. The police blocked them, but Savon and a few others slipped through. The heavyweight clambered into the ring, enormous and powerful at 6ft 5in and with the similar big-screen good looks of the legendary Teofilo Stevenson. Glaring around the hall, Savon disappeared behind the curtains. The Cuban team were going home.

At a ceremony in Havana last month Fidel Castro personally delivered a national flag to the boxer to take with the Olympic team. Savon was praised for putting honour before money.

"The nation where I was born gives me happiness," said Savon, who seldom gives interviews and shuns foreign media. "When you abandon all that, then you are never really happy in life. They (people who wish him to turn professional) always start with a nice friendly chat about your children, wife, mother, father . . . but they are waiting for the moment to make another proposition."

Savon enters the arena in Sydney not only as the boxer who angered the Americans in Houston by refusing to continue a charade, but as the man most likely to match the feat of countryman Stevenson, the only fighter to win three Olympic golds in the same weight class.

Savon might have already equalled that record had not the Cuban team boycotted the Games in Seoul. As the 1987 world champion, he would have gone to Korea as the strong favourite.

Stevenson won his gold medals in the super heavyweight division from 1972 and was offered $2 million to turn professional. But he, too, shunned the money and the American Dream.

"Professional boxing treats a fighter like a commodity to be bought and sold and discarded when he is no longer of use," said Stevenson at the time.

In 1996, the Cuban boxers won four gold medals and two silvers, and in August coach Sagarra announced that they were aiming for a clean sweep in Sydney: 12 gold medals. Audacious and arrogant, particularly to American ears, it reflects the anger of Houston and the depth of talent available to the most powerful boxing nation in the world.

"Felix is in good shape," said an understated Agarra last month at the Cuban team's announcement. "Felix has beaten all the boxers there."

The concern is that sometimes that isn't enough.