Hit Man - Brian Hughes [44]
Hearns was still reluctant to fight outside America, which forced the increasingly desperate King to persuade bosses in New Orleans to host the fight. He assured them that “under normal circumstances, we’d expect to have fifty thousand people in the Superdome to see this fight” and said he would guarantee at least half that number, which would still allow them to make money. He took a hit, however, on ticket sales for closed-circuit television, a market that seemed to have collapsed. Even in Hearns’s traditional stronghold of Detroit, the Windsor and Allen Park theatres cancelled showings of the fight, leaving the Joe Louis Arena, the Pontiac Silverdome, and the Royal Oak, Americana and Mai-Kai theatres as the only venues to show the fight. They would eventually draw only 10,000 fans each. King used this as a bargaining chip to persuade both Hearns and Benitez to take the $250,000 reduction in their $1.5 million purses. Finally the date was set for 3 December 1982, on a bill dubbed as “The Battle of Champions.” Sharing top billing with Hearns and Benitez was a great fight between the fabulous Wilfred Gomez and the all-action Mexican Lupe Pintor for the super-bantamweight crown.
FOR ALL THAT it had been such a hard fight to sell, Hearns-Benitez was an intriguing contest, matching one of the most explosive punchers in memory against the most gifted defensive boxer of his generation. Wilfred Benitez was born in the Bronx, New York, on 12 September 1958, the youngest of eight children to Puerto Rican immigrants Gregorio and Clara Benitez. Life in the Bronx required the Benitez children to grow up quickly, and at just four years old Wilfred’s father introduced him to boxing. By the age of seven, when Gregorio decided to move his young family back to Puerto Rico, young Wilfred was showing a natural aptitude and was perceived as exceptional by his junior coaches. At fourteen, he was selected to represent Puerto Rico in the 1973 Central American and Caribbean Games, in Costa Rica. He was drawn against the Olympic champion, an experienced Cuban, and although he lost it was only by a split decision. A short while later, with a record of just six losses in over 100 amateur bouts, he applied for a professional licence. Because he was under the required age of consent, his father, who also acted as his manager, lied about his age and entered his son’s date of birth as 12 September 1956.
In November 1973, aged seventeen according to his licence but fifteen in reality, Benitez took his first steps in the professional ranks and knocked out Hiram Santiago in one round. His ascent thereafter was rapid. Benitez stood at five feet ten inches tall and possessed a reach of seventy inches (compared to Hearns’s seventy-eight inches). His array of boxing skills, allied with his devastatingly accurate counterpunching ability, earned him the nickname “El Radar” in Puerto Rico. He became the youngest-ever world champion when he defeated light-welterweight king Antonio Cervantes at the age of seventeen, and went on to beat Carlos Palomino for the welterweight title. His seemingly inexorable rise was halted when he met Ray Leonard in November 1979, in a battle of the prodigies. He took Leonard to the limits of his abilities before losing near the end of the fifteenth round of his welterweight title defence. “It was like fighting the image of myself in a mirror,” Leonard later commented. “He was just as quick as I was.” Benitez quickly