Three Crowns For Wilfredo Benitez
NOT TURNING PRO DRAWS RIDICULE!
San Francisco, CA– Recently, I’ve been hit via email and in blogs with criticism as to why I didn’t turn professional after what some might call a stellar amateur career. While fortunate enough to snag four Golden Glove titles, as well as three other tournaments, I could see my skills eroding before my very own eyes. No longer were the people throwing punches at me missing by a comfortable margin of inches, the shots were starting to connect and the ones I avoided were no longer measured by inches, it was more like millimeters. So when I was approached by two investors circa 1984 and asked to turn professional, I respectfully declined.
FIGHT EASIER GUYS IN PROS THAN IN TOURNAMENTS
The location was the now burned down “Original Joes” restaurant in the unit block of Taylor St. in San Francisco, just a few blocks away from where the original and oldest boxing gym in the United States was still standing, Herman-Newman’s Gym, owned by Billy Newman and run by a character named Don Stewart. The gym was home to a lot of us, even when we didn’t have fights on tap or were not training, guys would swing by the gym just to see what was going on. At this luncheon, the two men, now deceased I believe, laid out a plan and a contract. The deal would have given me $25,000 a year for two years and I’d get to keep 65% of any purse money I might earn. They had already put on paper six guys (stiffs) they wanted me to fight in that first year of the deal.
INSURANCE POLICY WAS A REAL “EYE OPENER”
What I found disturbing about the meeting was that they also had a Life Insurance policy on me, for if something were to happen to me in the ring, they could recoup their investments. After watching Ray Mancini kill Deuk-Koo Kim in 1982, something Ray I don’t think ever recovered from emotionally, and having beaten Bazooka Limon and later Wilfredo Benitez around one of the two rings on the Newman’s Gym main floor (there was another ring, albeit smaller downstairs that belonged to the stable of the late Johnny “Kid Carnation” Vidal) in front of none other than Jack Fiske and Al Corona, who were the boxing scribes for both major San Francisco newspapers, Fiske the Chronicle and Corona the Examiner, this made my head grow bigger than Barry Bonds, and I wasn’t taking any Performance Enhancing Drugs.
WARY OF LIMON, BUT BENITEZ MADE MY KNEES SHAKE!
Out foxing and beating Limon to the punch fighting southpaw, as he was set to fight (and lose) to Cornelius Boza Edwards in a just a couple of weeks in Stockton, CA in 1981, I became delusional in thinking that if I could beat Limon, even in the gym so decisively, that the pro ranks couldn’t be all that tough. In 1984, in what was my first week back after Tonsil surgery, the guy handling Benitez, Sonny Marson, still pissed off that I had left his M & M (Marson & the late Bill Mateo) Boxing Club after winning my first Golden Glove title, asked my trainer Chris if he would allow me to spar with Wilfredo.
ANOTHER INSTANCE WHERE FEAR WAS A PLUS!
Gomez was a protective sort and asked me if I felt up to it. I had only been running about ten days, was three weeks removed from the surgery and had been in the gym less than a week. Sitting in the grungy locker room where Athletes Foot fungus was not on the floor, but seemingly in the pungent air, Chris asked me after checking my weight if I would go with Benitez. To put it mildly, I was scared to death. Although he was on the decline, this was the man that knocked WBC 154 lb. champ Maurice Hope out cold (he was snoring) with one well placed right hand. I said yeah and after warming up for eight rounds or so, four shadow boxing, three jumping rope and one stretching, it was time!
MARSON HANDED CHRIS A PAIR OF 20-OUNCE PILLOWS!
Always looking for any edge he could get, Sonny broke out the biggest pair of boxing gloves I had ever seen. Usually a loud mouth, I had been muted by nervousness and the task at hand, still I vehemently objected to the gloves, as did my trainer Chris. Sonny called me a “chicken s*it,” and I responded that it was he who was the coward here seeing I was just an amateur and Benitez had won three world titles at three weights. I was adamant, there would be no sparring unless I could wear my Ray Flores brand 14-ounce gloves that Ray made in his Burlingame, CA garage specifically for me after measuring my hands.
BENITEZ SET TO GO TWO ROUNDS BEFORE ME!
While Wilfred sparred with a monster puncher in Zack “Attack” Hewitt, Chris laced up my Flores gloves. If Benitez and Marson wouldn’t allow me to box with my regular sparring gloves, I’d either find somebody else, or do some mitt work. I was not going to allow myself to be taken advantage of, hell, I was already a nervous wreck. When I stepped through the ropes, Marson started his bitching, but Benitez seeing how small I was in body mass, overruled Sonny and we went two hard rounds. After the first, Chris told me between rounds to throw everything I had at Benitez as the nerves that had me in panic mode had dissipated. Following Chris’ cue, I hit Benitez, who positioned himself against the ropes with hard shots from multiple angles. I can remember him hurting me to the body once, but that was in round one.
Wilfredo Benitez Today!
BENITEZ WAS DONE FOR MORE THAN JUST THE DAY!
What I realized was that Wilfredo, who had won his beaten Antonio Cervantes for a 140 lb. crown, Carlos Palamino at 147, and the aforementioned Maurice Hope at 154, was as shot as Bonny and Clyde after the bank robbing pair were ambushed by cops with machine guns. Not only that, when Benitez and I would talk before and after the sparring session on the phone, the only subject in his vernacular was sex!
OTHER EXAMPLES MADE ME RUN FROM PRO BOXING
A local kid, Johnny Nava, after watching him get beat up even in fights that he won, this was disconcerting. Plus, I was watching the physical decline of a man that I had met several times prior to spending ten days as his aide on an Asian tour, the great Muhammad Ali was showing the residual effects of professional boxing. To see him being paraded around today, unable to speak and looking like a frail 100-year old man to me is disturbing. As for Nava, the last time I saw him he was moving slower than a 33-RPM record, thus he was clearly not the 45-RPM disc I had met before he turned professional.
THERE IS THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION
The reason I penned this piece is that some clowns on a Facebook page called me a coward for not turning professional. Of course these were guys that had never really boxed themselves, unless you count apples, oranges or shoes. But it did bother me in that the names they were hurling my way I could not defend against without stooping to their level. One more time, take a look at the photograph above of Wilfred Benitez. With that and this handwritten piece, I think I have set the record straight!
Pedro Fernandez