A MAN called Alan Hubbard died a few days before Muhammad Ali climbed through the ropes at Wembley last Saturday.
I knew Hubbard and Hubbard certainly knew the other Ali. The real Ali and Hubbard had walked at dawn by the Congo River in Zaire all those thousands of years ago. Yeah, Big Al knew Muhammad. Hubbard did a lot of jobs in the newspaper game for a long, long time and he kept some stunning company.
Back in 1998, in New York at the Goodwill Games, Hubbard was stuck with me when a small coup took place involving some of the Cuban boxers. The old Felt Forum corridors were buzzing with tales and promises of defection; Ramon Garbey, a big light-heavyweight who defected and missed out on glory, was walking tall, apparently pulling strings. Hubbard and I were on the story. At the time, I think Hubbard had an award-winning column in the Independent on Sunday. I certainly kept good company that year in New York; in boxing the company you choose is critical.
That late summer in New York, at Victor’s, the old-school Cuban restaurant, there was a permanent curtain fixed to keep secret the diners; I was in there every night after the boxing. It was fun watching Garbey and others smuggle men in and out for plates of food and private meetings concealed behind that drape of American dreams. It was a hot time for defections; two years earlier there had been the infamous gun incident when Joel Casamayor was revealed at a conference in Atlanta, close to where the Olympic boxing was taking place. His defection complete, his presence an insult to the Cuban media. One of the Cuban officials, a man in a tracksuit, was involved in a scuffle and a pistol fell from his pocket.
In the ring at the Garden basement – the plan had originally been to have the boxing on the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier moored in the Hudson River – there was a brave stand by the American fighters. The Cubans and Russians had sent their very best men to New York that summer. There was, no doubt, a caviar bar in Brighton Beach where the Eastern Bloc fighters were being shown piles of dollars and promised the earth to defect. It was a strange time in boxing, a time of expansion and intrigue and the fading power of the old guard, the Cold War giants who had run the sport. They never fully vanished, the spymasters and regime thugs who controlled the amateur sport of boxing for so long.
It was lively in New York, trust me. Denis Lebedev, Vic Darchinyan, Andriy Kotelnik and Serhiy Dzinziruk were all there. Perhaps, the prize was Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov and he never turned; the others did, and all won world titles. Gaydarbekov would beat Gennadiy Golovkin in the middleweight final at the Athens Olympics. In New York, Gaydarbekov beat Jermain Taylor in the semi-final. It is easy to see why the Russians wanted to get him out to Brighton Beach to talk business.
The American team were a mixed gang, mostly boxers who fell just a bit short or failed to deliver as professionals. Ricardo Williams Jnr, Jermain Taylor, Larry Mosley, DaVarryll Williamson, Dominick Guinn and Brian Viloria all fought their hearts out in front of their home crowd. Incidentally, Alex Arthur lost to a kid called Michael Evans, who looked brilliant. Evans lost in the semi-final to another one of the Russians. A few years later, Evans was in Liverpool to lose to Amir Khan.
The Cuban team was strong with Felix Savon, Maikro Romero, Mario Kindelan, Ariel Hernandez and Juan Hernandez. The giant super-heavyweight, Alexis Rubalcaba was there. He was terrifying, even by Cuban standards. He lost in the final to Paolo Vidoz; Cuban boxers won six of the 12 finals.
In the middle of the meal-time Cuban gatherings and the heroic efforts of the American team, Hubbard was ducking and diving looking for a story or two. It seems like they were ancient days, and, in many ways, they did belong to another time and place. I still have a Goodwill Games reporter’s pad.
One year later, remember, at the World championships in Houston, the entire Cuban team was recalled to Havana by Fidel Castro. His emergency recall came as Felix Savon was gloved and ready to enter the ring for the final at heavyweight. True, ridiculous tale.
Last week I certainly kept good company. The play about the life of Frankie Lucas, Going for Gold, opened at the Chelsea Theatre and I went with Mick Costello. We had a conversation with Clinton McKenzie, and he told stories about boxing behind the Iron Curtain. “In Kiev, all the birds had gold teeth – even the young ones. Gold teeth, the lot,” he told us about his trip in 1974. He was, as usual, impeccable in a stylish suit and spats. He had known Lucas from the very early days. The play was impressive.
Julius Francis was there and that is good company. We talked about the build-up to the Mike Tyson fight and his stay in an army barracks. Francis has always been an entertaining man. We decided to search for the infamous boots he wore in the Tyson fight – yep, the ones with a newspaper logo on the sole. It was a cash deal that Kellie Maloney put together. However, the boots vanished. Surely, they are worth a lot of money. Maloney thinks that she gave them to a charity for an auction. It would be good to find them; on Friday night I located the gloves that Joe Bugner wore for his 1971 fight against Henry Cooper. That is not a bad piece of sleuthing. I’m off to see them soon.
And then on Saturday and Sunday I was with Olympic champion, Galal Yafai. Now, that is good company; Alan Hubbard would approve.
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