BOXING

Tuesday, September 26

The strange boxing odyssey of Michael Bennett began when he was still in college, majoring in criminal justice, and ended here at the Sydney Convention Centre today at the hands of a class warrior from Cuba called Felix Savon.

Savon, who now seems certain to become only the second boxer in Olympic history to win gold medals at the same weight at three different Games, stopped Bennett a few seconds before the end of the third round. Bennett, the reigning world amateur heavyweight champion, did not see himself as a loser.

In a peculiar way, the defeat by the greatest amateur boxer since Teofilo Stevenson, another Cuban, represented the completion of Bennett’s attempt to reclaim his life. Nine years ago, while studying for his degree at North Park College in Chicago, Bennett was persuaded by some friends to participate in an armed robbery at a Toys 'R' Us store in the city. Bennett was caught and sentenced to 26 years in jail.

His sentence was reduced on appeal to 15 years, but while he was in prison in Illinois he was befriended by three men who went under the names Paspason, Pharoah and Mongoose. Each was, and still is, serving a life sentence but they taught him how to box, and a year after Bennett was released from jail in July 1998, he won the world championship and was named as captain of the US boxing team for Sydney.

Savon, six times the champion himself, had forfeited the right to meet Bennett in the final last year as a protest against questionable decisions that had gone against some of his compatriots in the tournament. Today’s encounter, then, had been billed as something of a grudge match, but Bennett refused to see it that way. He gave thanks for the opportunity of fighting a man like Savon and began to contemplate his future.

Nor was the fight really the clash of cultures that had been predicted. Savon has never turned professional. He could have made many millions of dollars if he had listened to the overtures of a host of promoters who told him he could have beaten Mike Tyson in his prime, but that would have meant abandoning his Cuban nationality and his principles and he vowed that he would never do that.

Those who were expecting Bennett to be the epitome of American brashness, a trash-talker, a professional hype-merchant waiting to happen, were sorely disappointed. He is an articulate man but he was full of respect for Savon and for Cuba.

Savon had presented him with a Cuban flag before the fight and Bennett said that some day he would like to visit the country and meet his conqueror again. Some of those who questioned him attempted to ridicule Bennett when he said Savon, 33, was a good guy. How did he know, they said. Hadn’t Bennett already told them that Savon had not said a word to him in the ring?

Bennett smiled at that. They had seen each other now and again in the Olympic Village, he said. Even though they did not speak the same language, they understood each other. They had waved or touched their foreheads in salute as they passed. They had a common bond.

As for the pressure he had felt going into the fight, Bennett, 29, put that in perspective by making a reference to the moment when relations between his country and Savon’s nearly brought about the end of the world with the Cuban missile crisis. “When Kennedy had the option of pushing the button,” Bennett said, “that is what I consider to be pressure. Thankfully for all of mankind, he did not take that option.

“I just feel blessed that I was able to battle with that great warrior that is Felix Savon. It is nice to have it in my repertoire that I faced him once. People have said that he could have turned professional but he has chosen to stay true to his country.

“Of course, I would have loved to have beaten him but not many people get to be an Olympian. I would have loved for my amateur career to have ended a different way, but I cannot complain or gripe. I have got to close the book now and start a new chapter.”

The fight was stopped when the judges considered that Savon had outpointed Bennett by such a margin that the American was being outclassed. He was being caught time and again by Savon’s fierce straight right hand and admitted afterwards that he had disregarded the urgings of his trainer and unwittingly made himself a sitting duck.

In the context of his life, though, the details of his defeat were an irrelevance. “I would be proud to become a professional boxer,” Bennett said. “I would be fortunate if I could do something I love and which would provide for my family. What I would prefer, though, is to work with children in some way. I would like to become a mentor of some sort.”

Savon’s mission is drawing close to its end. Bennett’s, you feel, is just beginning.