A Cuban Discipline Crisis?

By Steve Kim It wasn’t too long ago when renowned trainer Freddie Roach was telling anyone who would listen that Guillermo Rigondeaux was among the greatest, pure natural talents he had ever worked with. To him, this was a Cuban version of Manny Pacquiao; a young, raw, foreign talent, who he could mold into one of the best boxers in the world. Like the “Pac-Man,” who walked into the Wild Card Boxing Club almost a decade ago, Rigondeaux is a left-hander, who possessed raw power and speed, but just as importantly- it seemed- a hunger to succeed. Just a couple of months ago, Rigondeaux was scheduled to fight in Sunrise, Florida, on the untelevised portion of the Andre Berto-Carlos Quintana undercard on April 10th. Soon after, he put his name on the dotted line of a promotional pact with Top Rank. It was supposed to be the beginning of a meteoric rise. Instead, as we head into June, his progress has stalled; his future uncertain. "The thing is, they sent him two weeks before the fight," said Roach, in recalling that period, where he became estranged from the fighter and his camp. "I said, ’Guillermo, you’ve been training at home.’ His people gave him two weeks to get ready for a major fight and I said, ’You’re not ready.’ I canceled the fight. I did the right thing for the kid- and I got fired." What particularly alarmed the trainer was Rigondeaux’ inability to go three hard rounds on the mitts with him leading up to that date along with a sparring session where he was smacked around by a novice amateur. Roach, like many others before him, is finding out that training Cubans comes with a set of issues. Namely, getting them out of South Florida, specifically Miami/“Lil Havana.” "I would agree with that," said Joe Goossen, who perhaps had the best run of any trainer with a Cuban in this country, with Joel Casamayor. Goossen took over “El Cepillo’s” training duties in the late ‘90s after he had already turned professional. "I’ve had a few other Cuban fighters that came out here on the coattails of Casamayor, but they couldn’t hack the grind out here. And then, once come out here, Casamayor was able to make some new friends and, of course, you can always have your dalliances wherever you’re at. I don’t care if you’re on Mt. Nebo; you’re going to find something cute to do. But basically, Casamayor was dedicated when it came down to work. Once he came down to work, he was a dedicated Dan. "A rarity, and I say that because the lifestyle in South Florida is such that, boy, I tell ya, I don’t know if I would’ve lived this long if I lived there,” continued Goossen. “It’s a great party town; it’s a lot of fun there and there’s a large Cuban community and partying is just kind of conducive to that weather and food and social outlook. But out here, Casamayor was dedicated. The other guys that followed got homesick real fast. They missed that food, the culture, their friends and especially their girlfriends. So that’s where I ran into the problems. The guys really could not leave their girlfriends for a couple of months at a time." Under Goossen’s guidance, Casamayor captured the WBA 130-pound belt, while engaging in a host of other big fights against the likes of Diego Corrales, Jose Luis Castillo and Acelino Freitas, among others. During this stretch, Casamayor would stay in Van Nuys, California near Goossen’s gym. Like many other of his compatriots, Casamayor, who won the gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, had a huge amateur pedigree. But, unlike most of his Cuban colleagues, Casamayor was able to translate that into professional success. Two sports that are supposed to be so similar, amateur and pro boxing, in many ways, couldn’t contrast more. While it’s thought that Cubans are almost programmed to box like computers and are very difficult to convert into a more pro-friendly style, Goossen believes that’s the least of your worries in working with them. "The point that they’re professional amateurs over there, for the most part, it’s hard to get out of Cubans. That really isn’t the bothersome point because we all know how talented they are," he says. "Well, they’re talented guys, so what else could it be? It’s the activities outside the gym. You gotta remember; when you live in a communist country like Cuba, you’re deprived. You’re deprived of everything. You come out here, now, stores actually have food; there’s no communist guard on the corner looking to see if you have too many people in your house having a conversation. You want to have a barbeque, you gotta have a government permit. All these things. So when they encounter this type of freedom, which I hope we sustain, they really go whole-hog on it and take advantage of it." Another constant in the lives of Cuban boxers in America is Luis DeCubas, who has seemingly played a role, in one capacity or another, in just about every boxer that has defected from the Castro regime, starting in the early ‘90s with mercurial heavyweight Jorge Luis Gonzalez. DeCubas, whose company promotes Rigondeaux, agrees that Cuban fighters have a hard time adjusting to the freedoms of the U.S. "Without a doubt," he told Max boxing last week. "It’s very difficult because they come here and they have nothing. So it’s difficult for them to adjust. But, at the same time, for the number of Cubans fighters that have landed here, the percentage of world champions were pretty great. Casamayor became a world champion; Diosbelys Hurtado became a world champion and Juan Carlos Gomez became a world champion. So out of that six-tier group that were here, the first two tiers, three of them became world champions. So it’s a pretty good percentage. This batch now, I think a lot of them are going to be world champions." For every Casamayor, there was a Ramon Garbey, who simply became lost in the excess of American opportunity. Unlike “El Cepillo,” Garbey never could commit himself fully to training or spending large amounts of time away from Miami. But DeCubas believes that the newest crew of Cubans has learned from these cautionary tales. When it comes to leaving South Florida, one size does not fit all. "It would for certain fighters; for certain fighters, it isn’t," he stated. "This new batch that came over, the 2004 Olympic team from Greece, Gamboa, Solis, Rigondeaux, Yudel Jhonson, Yordanis Despaigne, they’re all different guys. Some would be better off outta here; some guys are better here. It depends on the personality and how they can adjust. This 2004 team, they’re all great guys; they train hard. It’s different than the Casamayors and the Garbeys and the Jorge Luis Gonzalezes and Hurtado. They had a little more difficulty training here in South Florida than these guys do." Another gifted Cuban is junior middleweight prospect Erislandy Lara, who is being moved quickly up the ranks. According to his manager, the noted Shelly Finkel, there have been no real headaches associated with his southpaw. "No, it’s fine; he just spends too much money," he said, laughing. "I haven’t had any of those problems. Maybe because there was a group that came over first and went through a lot of that. But no, he’s been pretty together." Finkel believes that the biggest disappointment, as it relates to this group of boxers, is that despite their natural abilities and the amount of Cubans in South Florida, "is that none of the Cuban fighters get a following. It doesn’t seem as though their own support them. They don’t draw big crowds." But when it comes to discipline, Finkel told Max boxing, "I felt that the Cubans were the best natural boxing athletes, but somewhat of a disappointment when they get here. They are lauded as stars and they are distracted by a lot of things. I know it from the Florida experience. I can’t say if they go somewhere else. They suffer for so long over there, under such hardship and they come here and it’s like a liberation, but it’s not, because they still haven’t made enough money to retire." In recounting his stretch at the Wild Card Boxing Club, Roach says of Rigondeaux, "He worked hard and he was very disciplined about what he did, I guess, unlike a lot of the Cubans that have come here in the past. He came here; he wanted to train here; wanted to live in L.A. when he’s training because he wanted to get away from that night life and the environment he had in Miami. So I thought maybe he was something different. But again, I’m only interested in him if he’s with a major promoter, because the people that are controlling him in Miami aren’t looking out for his best interests." In the case of Rigondeaux, the problems seem to run much deeper than just a questionable work ethic or geography. Currently, Rigondeaux is the basis of a contentious tug-of-war for his services between his original manager, Gary Hyde, and the Miami faction. Author Brin Friesen is currently working on a book (“The Domino Diaries”) that chronicles Rigondeaux’ recent journey. "I met him in 2007; I’ve been going to Cuba since 2000. He just seemed to embody, to me, why boxing is so relevant in that place," said Friesen on Friday afternoon. "Both as a product of the revolution- and with this guy, because he was really rural; really in the middle of nowhere and these guys recruit like no other country in the world- and yet, he turns his back on the state. The first thing they did when he tried to defect in 2007, they seized the car that they had given him after his second gold medal. So then, he escapes. It’s just been a nightmare since he’s been in the United States." Friesen says that the pull of Miami isn’t just about the nightlife or culture.