by Peter M. Johansen, Havana, December 1993.
Teofilo Stevenson thinks that he would have won the fight the whole world of boxing
was deprived of.
This is the first time Teofilo Stevenson goes public – and he goes public in Klassekampen, a newspaper that isn’t exactly well renowned for its sports pages.
He speaks English for the first time during the whole interview. He has made sure that this really is my last question.
– So this is your last question, for sure?
The mighty fighter throws a mock punch and some quick left jabs pretending
to keep his distance. He has faced this question so many times during his career and after. And he has certainly answered his closest friends and colleagues and young Cuban boxing talents that still worship him.
Teofilo is the only person to win three Olympic gold medals in the heavyweight class [this was before Felix Savon, pmj]. He was the only one in the whole world of boxing, after the legendary Laszlo Papp of Hungary (1948, 1952, 1956).
But he has never answered this question to media before now.
– And this is your last question? He smiles.
The question is a variant of the eternal question in the boxing world: Who’s the greatest?
The Greatest
In boxing it’s only about being the greatest. Boxing doesn’t have any Franz Krienbühl or Antonio Gomez; there’s no room for heroic losers. Either you win or you’re out (of sight).
This is exactly what Muhammed Ali, Cassius Clay from Louisville, Kentucky, called himself: The Greatest. He was never modest. But Teofilo Stevenson is. He is modest, even when achieving the Olympic gold medals from Munich in 1972, Montreal in 1976 and Moscow in 1980.–
– I think it would have been a great match. I think I could have beaten him, when I look back at the time when it was meant to take place. I was very well prepared, Stevenson says.
He takes a pause from elaborating on his own chances in order to show his honest and deep respect for “The Lip from Louisville”.
– He was a great boxer and a great man. He was in no way the clown that he often was portrayed as. He stood up for his personal viewpoints, and he was a great athlete.
No monkey
Stevenson still thinks that he would have won the match that the whole world of boxing was deprived of, probably the greatest fight in the history of boxing that never took place, not a hypothetical comparison of the really great ones: Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammed Ali. The Five Greats and still Undisputed Champions of the World.
It wasn’t just the enthusiasts of boxing that regretted that the two didn’t step into the ring together. (The first attempt at fixing a match was in 1976 and the second in 1978) (https://remezcla.com/features/sports/muhamman-ali-vs-teofilo-stevenson/).
Stevenson’s opponents also got something to regret and received a lot to complain about. They were the ones who had to endure the beatings in the ring. The fights usually ending in knockouts, often before the first round was over. Stevenson was effective, as his Olympic record spells out clearly.
– I would never have underestimated him. That year the fight against Muhammed Ali was the only thing on my mind when I was boxing. In that period, I won all my matches with more ease than ever before because I always had that big match on my mind.
– The task would not have been easy, I was sure of that. That’s why I was practicing even harder in the gym. I hit the punching ball and the sandbag harder. And every time I hit the punching bag I tried to imagine what kind of counterattacks Muhammed Ali would answer with. I had studied him very closely, how he fought, his strengths and his weaknesses. I admired him, he was no bragging monkey. His behaviour was only his way of being a great professional, says the publicly employed Stevenson. He himself could have been a multimillionaire, but finds instead Klassekampen suitable to “take on Muhammed Ali”.
– In his position he had to get the cash to pay for his living. They made him into a showman.
The neighbourhood where we are is buzzing, Teofilo is here! We had called for cigarettes. Stevenson had gone empty. A fag goes all too well with a glass of five year old Varadero-rum.
– But don’t tell anyone remember I am a role model, he smiles. An elderly woman enters with a cigarette, kisses Teofilo on his cheek and embraces him like a caring mother.
Teofilo is a darling of the sport enthusiast Fidel Castro as are the star runners Alberto Juantorena and Ana Fidelia Quirot (who almost lost their lives in an accidental explosion at home). But Teofilo is the tallest, around 1,90 meters. He has a face that could be used to sell after shave. The unmarked face is a sign of Stevenson’s greatness in the world of amateur boxing. How many fighting wrecks have ended up in bars selling old memories for a drink or three? A worn out theme in the movies long before Sylvester Stallone’s fascistic Rocky-character entered the ring and the screen.
The Noble Art
Boxing is called The Noble Art of Self-defence. Well, noble? Not all would agree… Stevenson’s greatness also lays in his merciful way of treating inferior opponents, as long as he could, hoping that the referee would step in and stop the unequal fight before unnecessary damage was done. His knockout record is frightening. But numerous fights show that he wasn’t comfortable with his superiority. His modesty in superiority is what makes this communist a sports hero. Thirteen years after the Olympic gold medal in Moscow, we have before us a sympathetic person, very unlike many punch-drunk men from the sport of boxing.
Cuba used to be used as a gambling hall and used for other mafia activities before 1959. Boxing belonged to show business, and one of the legendary fights of heavy weight boxing actually took place in Havana when Jesse Willard won the title from Jack Johnson by knockout in round 26! (April 5th 1915)
The revolution put an end to professional boxing. Today, Cuba is the leader of amateur boxing in the world.
Q: In the Olympic Games and World Championships boxing is huge, and is spread all over the world and new countries are joining in. Do you see new trends on the world stage?
– The quality increasingly higher because the boxers have strengthened their capacity through better and more methodical training. They are better prepared when they enter the ring, they are physically much stronger. Fighters that are well trained often win against presumably more skilled boxers. Strength often overshadows better skills and other qualities. We are trying to develop the art of boxing, the elegance and the techniques. Boxing is not about who is strongest.
Q: The new system of attaining points is disputed. Does it favour aggressiveness rather than technique, as it doesn’t take the quality of the punches into consideration?
– Yes, but it’s still important not to end up with that “style”, but to raise the technical level, the way we do in Cuba. This pays off in the end. It’s very much up to the judges how this will develop. Many of the judges should start practicing in order to improve their reflexes. Nowadays you get the impression that many of them press their buttons randomly and don’t even know which button their pressing.
Small great power
Cuba came high up on the list of medal-takers during the Olympic games in Barcelona. The little island with about ten million inhabitants is a great power in sports, with various types of squads, and has solid tops in demanding team sports for both women and men.
– The development in athletics has only been possible because of the revolution and the changes it led to in health, education and in other sectors. The health of the general population has been strengthened, as well as research in sports. Sport is now available to all.
– There are two aspects in sports. One aspect is the competitions; the other aspect is to develop the physical capacity among ordinary people, Stevenson says.
Q: What about the huge price money in sports, like the gold bars the high-jumper and world record holder Javier Sotomayor brought home?
– This depends on the consciousness of the individual athlete. Sotomayor and others can keep their money and their Mercedes Benzes if they want to. But Sotomayor and Quirot have always given all their money to the National Institute of Sports where they have trained. Previously the institute was not self-financed. This is the reason behind the direct contracts with those entities that arrange competitions. This was changed in 1991.
Even so, the chance of making money – a lot of money – is tempting, especially when taking into account the economic conditions in Cuba as they are nowadays. During the Pan-American Games in Puerto Rico some 30 Cubans defected and didn’t return to Cuba. In October about half of the troupe of the Cuban national ballet at the Gran Teatro in Havana defected while in on a tourney in Madrid. Among the defectors was the artistic director Olga Bustamente, the right hand of Alicia Alonso.
Afro-Cubans
The official Cuba doesn’t like having to talk about the plight of the Afro-Cuban population. But no matter what, it’s documented beyond any doubt that there are few blacks in the political and administrative leadership. All the political conversations we had [the conversations comrade Olaf Svorstoel Sierraalta and I were part of at the time] are with white males – because the official Cuba is also actually dominated by males.
Discrimination is ongoing, even though it is wrapped in and good intentions, and even though there seemingly is a relaxed atmosphere in the streets.
But black representation is nowhere to be seen at any public places other than in sports and culture. Whereas there the stars are black, the high-jumper Sotomayor, the runner Quirot and all the sprinters among both women and men, the heavyweight boxer Felix Savon and the rest of the boxing team and most of the volleyball and basketball teams are predominantly black.
Q: Does the lack of blacks in the political and civilian leadership make sports the
same social-economical important stepping-stone for blacks in Cuba, like sports in
the US, the UK and France?
This is a question that apparently doesn’t go down well with the officials surrounding Stevenson in the room. The Afro-Chinese interpreter Peggy Lee claims she doesn’t understand the question. But Stevenson does. He has taken the point.
– I understand perfectly well what you mean. This is a question that society has to solve. The sphere of sports can’t solve this problem alone. This is about the development of humanity, about racial discrimination. Changing traditional structures that go way back in time takes more than the relatively short period of thirty years that we have behind us now, Stevenson says, before he moves on to another round with Muhammed Ali.
We repeat the same rounds with people in the neighbourhood. They are eager to hear about the fight that never happened. They are pleased to hear that Stevenson, their Teofilo, is considered to be the winner. Punches fly through the air, and a shadow is floored to the tarmac canvas after a whirling combination of left swings and right crosses, followed by a quick step aside and a shoulder move followed by a new series of punches. What a match that would have been …
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