Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [123]
Benitez was the youngest of eight children born in the Bronx, New York City, where his father and mother, Gregorio and Clara, had moved in the early Forties to work. When Wilfred was seven they moved back to St George, seven miles from San Juan. Two of his brothers, Gregory and Frankie, became boxers and young Wilfred followed. He was easily the best and his rare talent saw him included in the Puerto Rican team for the Central American and Caribbean Games at the age of just fourteen. Pitted against men, he had the misfortune to draw Olympic champion Orlando Martinez of Cuba, one of the best amateurs in the world. Astonishingly, he lost only by split decision. After more than 100 amateur contests, with just six losses, he turned pro at fifteen, with his father doctoring his application form to disguise his real age.
Benitez made his debut in 1973 and took down Hall of Famer Cervantes three years later. Nobody was supposed to be so good, so soon. Cervantes had seemed unbeatable; indeed Duran’s manager had apparently avoided him. “Back in 1974 when Duran was lightweight champion there was a good opportunity for him to fight Antonio Cervantes,” said former manager Luis Spada. “It would have been a very, very good fight in Latin America. But Carlos Eleta thought that it was a dangerous fight because Cervantes, who was a great fighter, was bigger. I am sure, though, that Roberto would have had no trouble beating him.”
Benitez, who beat Carlos Palomino to win his second title, liked to call himself “the Dragon,” but the Radar tag was far more apt. Matchmaker Teddy Brenner called him “at one time the best fighter in the world.” Yet the young prodigy with the veteran mind was still a child outside the ring. He womanized, skipped training, partied hard and generally gave his authoritarian father fits. Before he was stopped with six seconds left in the fifteenth round against Leonard in 1979, he lost his way to the gym. The lack of discipline forced his father to take a stand. “Even if they gave me $200,000 to work in his corner, I would not,” the elder Benitez told a Ring journalist. “I refuse to be in his corner … I am not a hypocrite. There is no fighter who can be inactive for seven or eight months and then compete in a fight such as this one and hope to be sharp. It is not important that he is starting to train well now. He has not listened to anything I have told him. But Wilfred is a boy who just refuses to listen.”
It was common knowledge in the fight game that Benitez trained a little over a week for Leonard. Yet his brilliance was undeniable. “Benitez is a ghost,” Leonard said. “He anticipates your moves and almost makes himself invisible. I never met a better defensive fighter.”
Benitez jumped up to light-middleweight. He was too good to remain contender for long, and in May 1981 challenged Britain’s Maurice Hope for the WBC title. Hope was a decent champion, but Benitez was in a different class and cold-cocked him with a blistering right hook in round twelve, knocking out two of his teeth. “He can put his teeth under his pillow,” remarked Benitez later. “Duran is dead. He is afraid of me. He knows me. When somebody talks about me to Duran, Roberto tells them don’t talk to me about Benitez, I am afraid of him.”
Benitez had been winding up Duran for several years. The Puerto Rican often sat ringside at his contests and shouted abuse, something to which Duran would respond with crude gesture and threats of his own. Their animosity spilled over at the post-fight Duran-Leonard press conference in Montreal. “I just told Roberto, give me a chance, give me a chance,” Benitez said. “He said, ‘Get out, I’ll kill you.’ I said to him, ‘Let’s do it right now, right here.’”
With Duran now campaigning at light-middle too, and both men promoted by Don King, a bout between two Latin kings was a cinch, especially given Duran’s oft-declared antipathy to all things Puerto