San Francisco, CA– As noted by historian “Sin City” Richey, today marks 26 years since the “straight” fight between Alexis Arguello and Aaron Pryor. The fight, well it wasn’t really a fight as Pryor “owned” Alexis before AA tapped out after being dropped in round ten. It was as one sided an affair as they get with Alexis mimicking making like a human yo-yo attached to Pryor’s finger. When it was finally over, I wanted to cry.
ALEXIS COULDN’T SWALLOW BITTER PILL OF DEFEAT
Unlike Arguello, I didn’t take issue with his losing to Pryor. Alexis on the other hand told me as we sat together in a Managua restaurant in 1999, that he had problems accepting the losses to Pryor, this some 16 years after their second encounter. Although Arguello never hinted at Pryor’s involvement, he always felt that the first fight wasn’t fair.
ARGUELLO THOUGHT LEWIS DID HIM WRONG
During my week long trip to Nicaragua, which was an attempt to get Alexis into cocaine rehab after talking suicide during what was unbeknownst to him, a live radio interview, I watched the Explosive Thin Man go through countless mood swings. When the subject of Pryor came up, the conversation was then switched by Alexis to Panama Lewis. “Do I think he tampered with the gloves in Florida? My agent Bill Miller, he tried to get the commission to look at the gloves and drug test Pryor after. We never saw the gloves afterwards.”
PANAMA’S SPECIAL BOTTLE REVISITED AGAIN
As for the “special mix” that Panama Lewis gave to Pryor before the stop of the 14th round of their first fight, AA said this: “Pedro, I know there was some bulls*it going on over there in the corner. The truth is we will never know what was in that bottle. I thought Pryor, I thought there was chance I could get to Pryor because he was tired. But after he drank from the bottle, he was reenergized.”
PRYOR & ARGUELLO BECAME PEAS IN A POD
“Pryor and I are now good friends. I asked him if he knew what was in the bottle and he told me he didn’t.” In the end it was a brutal beating that brought about the end of this epic prizefight. Arguello sunk to the canvas as the great referee Stanley Christodoulou waved the fight off. “I will never know what might have been if Panama Lewis wasn’t involved.” (It was eight months later in New York when Lewis was caught after he pulled the padding out of Luis Resto’s gloves, something Lewis and Resto went to jail for)
REMATCH WITHOUT PANAMA LEWIS
With Emanuel Steward training Pryor for the rematch that took place 26 years ago today, there would not be the hanky panky of their first pairing. But the Arguello that stepped through the Cesar’s Palace ropes that night was “damaged goods.” The punishment AA took some 10 months earlier finished him as a fighter. Ruined both emotionally and physically, he would never again be the “Explosive Thin Man.”
FIRST PRYOR FIGHT REALLY THE END FOR ALEXIS
Arguello was for all intents and purposes finished as a fighter. Whether he suffered from clinical depression as some of us surmised, Arguello after 1982 and the first Pryor fight in my eyes, he was not the same person. Gone was the magic of his personality and presence.
SUICIDE OR MURDER?
There was mid 1990s comeback that fell short. The idea of promoter Bob Arum was to match Arguello with the fading Julio Cesar Chavez. But a loss on points to the late Scott Walker ended any comeback hopes. Arguello’s life ended a couple of months ago in a house in which I spent a lot of time with him and his second family. Whether he killed himself as the Nicaraguan officials claim, or Alexis, who was Mayor of Managua, was assassinated we will never know.
Pedro Fernandez