Pryor Says He’s Not Hooked on Cocaine

An undefeated world champion prizefighter who “got the limelight, and couldn’t handle it,” has a drug problem, is faced with forfeiting potential million-dollar fights, and in danger of knocking himself out, friends and associates say.

Aaron Pryor is the International Boxing Federation junior welterweight crown-holder. He is 36-0, with 34 knockouts. But he hasn’t fought in six months.

Friends say drugs have gotten to Pryor, 29. But in an interview published in the Miami Herald last Wednesday, Pryor denied he is malnourished, paranoid or hooked on cocaine.

“Everybody’s done drugs,” he said. “We’ve all tried it.”

Instead, he compared himself to a player in a “rags-to-riches” movie script--the kid from a Cincinnati ghetto who becomes a champion and is thrust to the top.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be around to watch the script,” Pryor said. “It’s no fun on top, enjoying your own success. I always feel like somebody is watching me.”

Pryor said he feels most comfortable in Liberty City, an impoverished neighborhood in Miami. “In Liberty City, they accept me with no money and no jewelry,” said the man known as The Hawk.

Trainer Richie Giachetti said Pryor is battling personal, not drug problems.

“He got the limelight and he couldn’t handle it,” Giachetti said.

One of seven children, Pryor grew up in poverty in Cincinnati. He slept in doorways, never knew his father, and watched as his brother was arrested and sentenced to 125 years in prison for aggravated robbery.

Too small for football, too slow for basketball, Pryor turned to boxing when he was 11. By the time he was 23, he was the Golden Gloves lightweight champion. Almost immediately he turned pro.

“It was all too quick. First he’s a humble kid from the ghetto, then all of a sudden he’s king of Caesar’s Palace,” said Miami boxing promoter Walter Alvarez.

Pryor went on to knock out Alexis Arguello in title fights in 1982 and 1983. Since then, he’s fought only twice.

“Sunup to sundown, he’s high,” said Lindsey Bolar, a former drug addict who lived briefly in Pryor’s $325,000 suburban Dade County home. “He’s hooked. If somebody doesn’t help him, he’s gonna be dead.”

Some have tried. Boxing promoter Bob Arum saw Pryor six weeks ago.

“Until he undergoes a radical transformation of his life style, he’s through boxing,” Arum said.

Fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco suggested that Pryor enter a drug rehabilitation program.

“He looked like Dachau,” said Pacheco, who last saw Pryor six weeks ago.

But Pryor said he “ignored everything (Pacheco) said about drugs.” Instead, his manager, Buddy LaRosa of Cincinnati said, Pryor has continued “partying hard--or whatever he was doing.”