An Elegy To Alexis Arguello

[marbleheadmaui]

[I wrote this shortly after Arguello killed himself]

In this last ten days or so of shocking and premature deaths Alexis Arguello still stands out for me and I thought I'd try to explain to those of you who weren't around in his prime why he means, not meant but means, so much to those of us who were.

The mid and late 1970's were a dismal time in this country. If five years from now we are still in the mess we face now then you'll have some idea of the loss of confidence, general unease and uncertainty that was prevalent back then. Things of substance seemed to be disappearing and only flash, a weak substitute remained. In music, rock was being replaced by disco is just one cultural example.

In the world of sports the influence of Muhammad Ali was everywhere. Talk, ridicule, insult etc. In baseball free agency ruined forever the idea of true dynasty's and fan relationships with players. In basketball the idea of team play embodied by the Celtics and the Knicks of the era began to be supplanted by the marketing emphasis on the individual star, most notably Julius Erving. It was a time of talkers like Darryl Dawkins and Reggie Jackson and Roberto Duran and the most prominent of these was Ali.

Against that backdrop, when I was 12, a friend of my Dad's who got fight films from all over, invited, as he often did, my Dad and I over for the fights. In this case it was to watch Ruben Olivares, a legend in his own time, fight some guy I had never heard of. Mr. Gatchell had one of those old fashioned 16 (?) millimeter setups.

So Olivares is fighting this tall, kind of awkward guy named Arguello. It is a close and competitive fight and the Olivares hook, one of the sports most lethal weapons, plays a prominent role. But the tall guy, though he looks mechanical, just can't be dissuaded and his presence in the ring seems to grow and grow. Late in the fight, Olivares loads up a left and suddenly he is on the ground! I turned to my Dad and say "What happened?" He didn't know so we ran the film back a couple of times until we saw it. Arguello, violating the "never hook with a hooker" dictum, had stepped inside and thrown the shortest of hooks that landed at the same time as Puas'. Arguello shook but stayed up, Olivares went down and didn't last much longer.

From then on I began to look for Arguello fights. In those days they weren't hard to find as he fought 5-6 times a year. The next time I saw him was when he was in Tokyo taking on unbeaten Royal Kobayashi. Alexis dominated him and had Koabyashi badly hurt in the middle rounds and instead of hurting him he finished him with body shots. The educated Japanese crowd roared their approval of his actions and now I knew I was onto something special. What absolutely cemented it was The Bloodbath in Bayamon when I was 14 or so. Both men were bloodied, shaken and courageous. It was Arguello afterwards who had completely won over the Puerto Rican crowd and who could not have been more complimentary of Alfredo Escalera. This is when I became convinced there was another way to be an athlete, and a man. The Ali/Namath/Duran way was not the only way and was, for me, not the best way.

Rather than talk, Alexis Arguello worked. In the three years following the Bloodbath, Arguello fought 15 times, 11 of them against champions or highly ranked fighters. The only talk he ever engaged in was when he told his promoter "Bring me the best and I will knock them out." It was a completely different athletic ethic. He knew no human being can get better at anything doing it 2-3 times a year, so he fought every 2-3 months. He had kind things to say before and after about his opponents. He let his hands do all the bragging. Even his opponents recognized the value in Arguello's approach. After losing his 135 belt Jim Watt made a point of saying that he was pleased that if he had to lose it was to such a gentleman. Is there a greater compliment? It was one as a teenage athlete I learned to want from my opponents. He also tested himself against the very best available opponents. He showed that the truest test of the quality of one's work and skill and talents was wading into what are now commonly referred to as deep waters. He did it time after time, down against Ganigan, down against Ramirez, shaken by Mancini and finally, conquered by The Hawk.

We learn most about men, and about athletes, when they lose. Arguello's stunning non-title loss to Vilomar Fernandez only made him shrug, say that he respected the decision of the commission and back to work he went. Alexis didn't lose again for 16 fights over four years. When he lost to Aaron Pryor they stood for the post fight interview with their arms draped across one another's shoulders. This showed me sport was sport. Even life and death sport was sport and when the match was over? it was over. Who did Arguello fight in his comeback fight from Pryor? Vilomar Fernandez.

Alexis Arguello was no saint. Nor was he some paragon of moral virtue. What he was was an Olympian figure of athletic virtue. He took a different, and better, path than the meaningless trash talking, bragging, rude one that had become so common. Alexis showed a generation of young, aspiring athletes that what mattered was work and craft and excellence for its own sake. He taught us that the contest between honest competitors had a value that couldn't be challenged even if nobody watched. He taught us that testing one's self over and over and over again is what makes an athlete a legend and in some ways, a man a man. Defeat is no disgrace, not testing one's talents to the maximum is. In short, Alexis Arguello played Pied Piper to the men of my age. With him there was no barrier to being kind, polite, pleasant and being dedicated and a savage competitor in all walks of life.

We will never forget him or the lessons he taught