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 Joel Casamayor – The Cool Cuban Fights On
 By Thomas Gerbasi (July 2, 2004)
Photo © HoganPhotos.com
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Look into the eyes of Joel Casamayor. At once intense, yet relaxed, arrogant, yet focused, the eyes of the Cuban defector turned world champion hold stories that most of us could never fathom.
Just think of years living under the iron rule of the Cuban amateur boxing program, a risky escape on the eve of the 1996 Olympics, an uncertain future in a new country while leaving his family behind, and a stellar professional career that is in a pivotal phase after losses to Acelino Freitas and Diego Corrales, and a tougher than expected win over Nate Campbell.
Casamayor, who battles Daniel Seda in a Showtime-televised bout on Saturday in Miami, stays poker-faced through it all, giving away nothing - whether with a smile or a frown. No, it’s mostly just a smirk, a way of saying to the world, ‘don’t worry, it’s all under control, and I’m the one controlling it.’
Everyone has heard the stories about Casamayor’s gift for winning an Olympic Gold medal in 1992 – a bicycle. He sold the bicycle to buy a pig to feed his family, and it cemented his decision to leave his homeland for an uncertain future in the United States.
And despite his obvious skill in the ring, the future was cloudy when he arrived in 1996, because the number of talented disappointments in this sport are countless. Just look at the amount of budding pros with great physical gifts who just don’t cut it when it’s time to step into the ring with the big boys - fighters who had bad management, a lack of toughness, or any number of negative variables that rendered their talent moot. Look at fighters like Casamayor’s countrymen Jorge Luis Gonzalez and Ramon Garbey, talented pros who, when freed from the restrictions of the Castro regime in Cuba, lost the discipline that cemented their early reputations.
Casamayor hasn’t fallen to the lure of sudden freedom. And even though he told John Duncan (author of the fascinating book In the Red Corner) in 1999 that when he arrived in the States, he "cried for a year," he didn’t lose his focus, didn’t lose his poker face, and didn’t lose once the bell rang.
Up the ranks he went, beating the usual suspects, fighting on undercards, all the while making the adjustment from the amateur ranks to the pro game, a game dominated by a select handful of Cuban standouts like Kid Chocolate, Kid Gavilan, Luis Rodriguez, and Sugar Ramos.
By 1999, Casamayor already achieved one of his boxing dreams by winning a world super featherweight title, which he defended six times. Then came the big fights, the real goal of most fighters, no matter what cultural background. They’re the fights where the whole world is watching, the arenas are packed, the lights are hot, and the money’s the best it’s ever been.
Yet in two out of those three fights, Casamayor didn’t have his hand raised.
And while losing two razor-thin decisions to heated rivals would melt most fighters’ icy veneer, the expression on Casamayor’s face rarely changed. His eyes would dart briefly as if to say ‘what happened here?’ but that was as much as you would get in terms of emotion.
It was quintessential cool, Casamayor as the Cuban gunslinger who came to town with one purpose – to be the last man standing. To do that, you have to have some mean in you. Not a boisterous form of mean, but a quiet cruelty that uses whatever means necessary to gain an edge, either physically or psychologically. It’s a toughness that goes past the rules of the prize ring; something rooted deep in a man that has defied what is expected from a slick boxer. As he said in a recent media teleconference, "I left Cuba and fought with whales and sharks before. I am a fighter, a warrior, I can fight anybody."
But with this mean, Casamayor has occasionally fought and fouled to his detriment, costing him the Freitas fight due to questionable point deductions for a foul and a knockdown, and causing him to almost get knocked out by Corrales due to his willingness to recklessly trade with the Sacramento knockout artist. Yet to his credit, even when he lost, he convinced enough people that he won. In other words, that 30-2 record could easily be 32-0.
If he were 32-0, he wouldn’t be fighting a former featherweight title challenger on Saturday night in the ultimate bout of symbolism - a Cuban defector fighting on Independence Day weekend. No, if Casamayor still had a spotless record, he would be the toast of the boxing world; a resident in the upper reaches of the mythical pound for pound rankings in search of bigger game and bigger money.
Instead, he starts over in his first bout since the March loss to Corrales, putting his future on the line against a fighter who can punch, always a dicey situation for a 32-year-old who has been boxing since he was a child, and whose defense has been spotty of late. Then again, if you’ve survived the bombs of Corrales, Freitas, and Campbell, it goes without saying that your chin is pretty sturdy.
With a victory, Casamayor gets back in line for a big fight, because titles really don’t mean much at this point. He’s got the winner (or loser) of Freitas-Corrales and Erik Morales all within his grasp, and then it’s either win or walk off into obscurity.
Obscurity isn’t much of an option for Casamayor, a fluid boxer whose punching accuracy and mean streak set him apart from most of his peers. Obscurity would mean that all of this effort was a waste, that all the years of toil in Cuba meant nothing in the great scheme of things.
That’s what this entire trip is about – greatness. You can’t be a Cuban fighter and be good – you either make it to the mountaintop as an immortal, or you fall short, dropping into the obscure world of those who may have briefly won a title or who just didn’t have it, condemned to the record books as a footnote. There is no middle ground.
Where Joel Casamayor ends up is left to the months and years ahead, because right now, he’s in pugilistic limbo – good enough to win the big one, but unable to do so consistently thus far. It’s those glimpses though, the flashes of brilliance - the speed, the technical artistry, the street fighter’s mentality – that stamp him as a special fighter.
And special fighters do special things.
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E-Mail Thomas Gerbasi at tgerbasi@mindspring.com
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