A recent
Wikileaks cable that features material from the US Ambassador to Nicaragua has some surprising revelations for the boxing world.
One section of the document entitled “NICARAGUA’S MOST WANTED PART I: THE CRIMES OF DANIEL ORTEGA AND HIS FAMILY,” contains the bombshell that super middleweight Ricardo Mayorga, who was accused of raping a woman in a hotel in Managua, Nicaragua in September 2004, made a secret deal with President Daniel Ortega, head of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FLSN) government, allowing him to
beat the charge.
According to the document, the FLSN
“agreed to protect the boxer in the courts if he would give the party a large portion of his international boxing winnings and ”advertise” for Daniel in public. Mayorga agreed, and an FSLN judge found him not guilty in December.”
Following the alleged fixing of the trial, the document states that, “
much of Mayorga’s winnings now reportedly go to Ortega, and when Mayorga fought in Chicago in August 2005, he dedicated the fight to Daniel, wore the FSLN colors, and flashed the number of the FSLN slot on the Nicaraguan electoral ballot (“casilla”) to the international media.”
Mayorga, in other words, in return for his freedom, was allegedly to function as a source of funding and as a puppet who spreads propaganda for Ortega’s leftist regime.
Interestingly, after the Supreme Court in Nicaragua had initially cleared Mayorga in the rape case involving a 22-year-old woman, a lower court found “irregularities” in the trial and in 2005 ordered a retrial, only
to be blocked by the Supreme Court, which quashed the lower court’s ruling, again effectively clearing Mayorga.
Mayorga, who recently scored a TKO victory over Michael Walker in Miami after more than 2 years away from the ring, declared the WikiLeaks cable where he is concerned to be “
absolutely not true.”
Mayorga is next slated to fight Miguel Angel Cotto for the WBA “Super World light middleweight title” on March 12 in Las Vegas.
