Valero's tale casts boxing in a poor light

AMERICA AT LARGE:The deeply troubled Venezuelan was poorly served by the boxing establishment, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

THE BIZARRE and tragic 28-year life of Edwin Valero came to an end on Monday when the troubled former WBC lightweight champion committed suicide in a Venezuelan jail, barely a day after he had confessed to having murdered his 20-year-old wife Jennifer Viera.

Since Valero’s entire adult life appears to have been a long, sustained cry for help, there is blame to be shared all around – by the Venezuelan authorities as well as by the boxing establishment, both in the United States and abroad.

The evidence suggests Valero’s professional career should have ended even before it began, in 2001, (and in a perfect boxing universe, one in which medical standards are universally shared and administered, it probably would have) but for the past nine years promoters and television networks and sanctioning bodies turned the exercise into a cat-and-mouse game, managing to stay one step ahead of the law while enriching their own coffers.

Which is not to suggest that Valero was not a willing participant in the process. But when viewed in its entirety, the past decade seems to have been an inexorable process hurtling toward an inevitable conclusion – the one that ended with his wife on a slab in a Venezuelan morgue and the boxer’s lifeless body, strung up by his own clothing, hanging in a cell in Valencia.

Reaction to the tragedy, it strikes us, has been almost universally inappropriate and misplaced.

From the head office of the World Boxing Council in Mexico City, the organization’s president Joe Sulaiman issued a communiqué noting that Valero “will remain in the 300 years of the history of boxing as the only boxer who, as a world champion, had a professional career of 27 knockouts in 27 fights for a knockout percentage of 100 per cent; Vitali Klitschko is second to him with a knockout percentage of 97.1 per cent”. Having made his priorities clear, Sulaiman went on to note “Valero was very close to President Sulaiman and many members of the WBC who witnessed the happy years of the fighter”.

Top Rank's Bob Arum, the latest American promoter to hitch his star to that of the troubled boxer, pronounced Valero's suicide "the first rational thing he ever did". Former New York Postscribe Michael Marley, writing in the Examiner, posted this witty addendum to Valero's 27-0 career mark: "His final record? You could say 29-0, all by KO. And the worst damage was inflicted at the end."

A brief recitation of the facts would seem in order here:

The onset of Valero’s professional career was delayed by a 2001 motorcycle accident in which he, by most accounts, incurred a cerebral haemorrhage. This condition would, in itself, have disqualified him from boxing in most reputable jurisdictions, but after winning his first eight fights in Venezuela, he engaged in three in California (which did not administer MRI exams) in 2003.

In early 2004 his then-promoter, Golden Boy, tried to get him licensed in New York. He failed a brain scan there, resulting in a suspension which should theoretically have been honoured elsewhere in the US and throughout the world. In practice, he was subsequently allowed to fight in Texas (whose rogue commission traditionally thumbs its nose at such niceties), in Japan (where he won his first world title, the WBA 130lb belt), and in France, Argentina, and Mexico, as well as Venezuela.

He won the vacant WBC lightweight title in Austin last year when he stopped Antonio Pitalua on a Golden Boy card televised by HBO pay-per-view. During another US sojourn he was arrested in Nevada on drunken driving charges, an infraction for which he was subsequently denied a US visa. Valero, who sported a large tattoo of his president Hugo Chavez on his chest, claimed he was being discriminated against for his political views.

After his last defence in February, a ninth-round TKO of Antonio De Marco in Monterey, promoted by Gary Shaw and televised by Showtime, Valero was apparently excused from a post-fight drug test, but later voluntarily relinquished his 135-pound title, claiming he wanted to move to a higher weight class. Less than a month ago he voluntarily checked himself into a rehab clinic for drug and alcohol addiction after being accused of having beaten Ms Viera (last autumn he had been accused of physically abusing his mother and sister as well), but his stay there barely lasted the weekend. Prosecutors had recommended he be jailed.

He was also charged with threatening medical personnel, whom he had attempted to persuade to say his wife’s injuries, which included stab wounds and a punctured lung, were the result of a fall down the stairs at their home.

Despite a restraining order preventing him from going near Ms Viera, Valero accosted her at a hotel in Valencia, in the rural Caribobo Province, on Sunday, and by his own admission stabbed her to death. He surrendered to Caribobo authorities, and was jailed. On Monday afternoon he was found hanging by his own clothing – though if ever a case called for the vigilance of a suicide watch, this would appear to have been Exhibit A.

Within hours the WBC’s Sulaiman had issued his proclamation and declared a “day of world mourning” in memory of the boxer. It might have been nice had he spared a thought for Mrs Valero’s memory too.

If there’s been one glimmer of hope forthcoming from the agonising events of the past few days it was in the refreshing stance adopted by Sergio Martinez. Saturday night in Atlantic City, a day before Jennifer Viera’s death and two days before Valero’s, the Barcelona-based Argentine won a unanimous decision over Kelly Pavlik to win the world middleweight title. On Tuesday Martinez and his promoter Lou DiBella announced the formation of a foundation to oppose domestic violence, particularly in the boxing community, a campaign in which they hope to enlist the support of the sanctioning bodies who seem to have fallen down on the job.

“Violence against women is simply unacceptable,” said Martinez. “Women must be respected, not abused.”

Over the past few days the stories have been emerging: family members and former boxing associates have cited everything from steroids to a co-dependency on alcohol and cocaine. One might have supposed that given Valero’s medical history he would have been more rigorously tested than most, so it does make it curious that not one of his pre- or post-fight physicals ever confirmed the presence of drugs.

The morning after Manny Pacquiao’s demolition of Joshua Clottey in Dallas last month, Pacquaio’s trainer Freddie Roach told me he had been presented with a short list of potential opponents for the Filipino great’s next fight. That one of the three names on the list was Valero’s suggests, despite all the hand-wringing that has taken place over the past few days, there’s not a promoter alive who was willing to wash his hands of Edwin Valero while there was still a buck to be made from him.