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This weekend in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez faces William Scull.
Although Scull, who won the IBF super-middleweight championship in October last year, lives and fights around Berlin, Germany, the defending champion actually comes from Matanzas, Cuba.
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Despite 300 fights in the amateur game, Scull turned professional nine years ago in Argentina, fighting there for two years before having his first bout in Germany.
After a few more bouts in Argentina, Scull began fighting solely – with the exception of a decision over Sean Hemphill in Las Vegas last year – in Germany.
Why Cuban boxers never turned professional
But why, with such a decorated and extensive amateur career, has Scull found himself fighting largely on German soil?
The answer, as in most things, is politics.
For years, under the rule of Fidel Castro, professional sports were banned in Cuba and the route to them was cut off by the regime. The Castro regime, which came to power in 1962, implemented a ban on professional boxing the same year.
In its place, the Cuban government implemented an extensive, widespread amateur programme that dominated the unpaid side of the sport for decades.
The result was that Cuba saw many of its star amateurs not turn off to the professional game.
Before the ban, Cuba regularly produced legends such as Kid Gavilan, who became the welterweight champion of the world alongside Kid Chocolate, José Nápoles, and the ill-fated Benny ‘Kid’ Paret.
All that changed from 1962, and the few Cuban fighters that made it into the professional ranks did so in spite of the regime, not because of it.
Many fled, some to Mexico and many to Miami, where they began careers. Nápoles went to Florida, where he was one of many Cuban boxers – alongside Luis Manuel Rodriguez – to be taken under the wing of famed coach Angelo Dundee.
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But who did not make it to the US and who refused to switch from the amateur to the professional code?
The Cuban boxers that many fans forget
The most-mentioned Cuban in that regard was Teófilo Stevenson, who was born in 1952 and died just sixty years later as an old and broken man.
Stevenson won the gold medal in the heavyweight division in the Olympics in 1972 (Munich), 1976 (Montreal), and 1980 (Moscow). He was 6’5”, and handsome, and supposedly won 302 of 332 amateur fights.
If Stevenson had turned over to the professional side of the sport in any of those years, he had all the skills, talent, and natural ability to have stood with George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, and Muhammad Ali.
And yet he declined the opportunity to do so, famously saying, «What are eight million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?»
Stevenson was not the only heavyweight to make such a choice, or to have so much success in the amateur side. After his retirement, Stevenson was followed as a Cuban star by Felix Savon, who won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Olympics.
Savon, also, did not turn professional.
Recent years have seen Cuba open up more and, consequently, many of its fighters have left to turn professional.
Born in Guantanamo, Joel Casamayor went to the US and went on to win multiple world titles.
He was followed by Yuriorkis Gamboa, Mike Perez, Yuniel Dorticos, Erislandy Lara, Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Luis Ortiz, and Yordenis Ugás.
Very few Cubans have reached the highest levels of the sport, however, and many have come unstuck with sudden wealth. The sport has yet, since 1962, to have a dominant champion. Against ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, could that change this weekend?
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