Boxing : They Didn’t Forget Kid Chocolate in Havana

The name in the obituary jumped out at me: Eligio Sardinias.

In 1983, I accompanied a U.S. amateur boxing team to Cuba. In the City of Sports Coliseum in Havana, before a capacity crowd of 13,000, I half-listened while a public address announcer introduced ringside celebrities.

I was startled when he shouted the name: “ Keed Choke-o-lot-tay !”

A slim, 73-year-old old man at ringside slowly rose to his feet, removed his hat and waved to the cheering crowd. He received a huge ovation.

I said to a U.S. coach standing near me, “Is that the Kid Chocolate?”

It was him.

Between USA-Cuba bouts that day (Cuba won, 12-0, and a headline writer called it the “Bay of Pugs.”), I talked with the former champion and took his picture. He appeared healthy, but arthritis had slowed him down.

He lived by himself in a small apartment, a few blocks from Havana’s waterfront.

He said to me, in English: “Will you tell all my old friends in the States I look pretty good?”

He gripped his belt buckle to show me the gap between his belt and his stomach, and said: “Look, I weigh 128 pounds, just two pounds over the featherweight limit.”

Kid Chocolate was the consummate boxer, an erect, smooth-punching featherweight/lightweight who glided effortlessly on his feet, and who at times reminded you of a miniature Sugar Ray Robinson. For his career, he was 132-10-6 and a one-time world junior-lightweight champion.

A native Cuban, his last five fights were in Havana, and he retired in 1938.

He was 78 when he died in Havana this week.

Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno are soon expected to sign to fight in London on Oct. 8. Although Tyson hasn’t said publicly that the fight is set, his lawyer says it is, as has the promoter.

Kevin Rooney, Tyson’s trainer, was asked in a telephone interview at his Catskill, N.Y., home Friday if the fight is Oct. 8.

“Mike called me the other day and said he’d be in the gym (at Catskill) Monday,” Rooney said. “To me, that means Oct. 8 is on.”

Was that all he said?

“Yeah,” Rooney said. “We don’t talk much between fights.”

For a while, after Tyson’s 91-second knockout of Michael Spinks on June 27, it looked as if they’d never talk again. During the bitter, name-calling days when Tyson’s contract with his manager, Bill Cayton, was being re-tooled, Tyson indicated Rooney might be canned.

Apparently irritated over Rooney’s public support of Cayton during the squabble, Tyson hinted that unless Rooney kept quiet or changed his tune, he was gone.

Rooney isn’t gone, yet.

“Writers kept writing that, that I was in trouble or gone, but Mike never said a word to me,” he said.

“So as far as I’m concerned, my situation was never in doubt. If Mike didn’t want me to be his trainer, he’d tell me, right?

“Since the (Spinks) fight, I’ve talked to him twice, which is more than we usually talk between fights. After a fight, we go our separate ways.”

London promoter Jarvis Astaire predicted this week that Tyson-Bruno will draw a capacity 60,000 to Wembley Stadium for the HBO show. The fight will start at midnight in London (4 p.m. in Los Angeles).

Tyson should earn “well over $5 million, and that’s conservative,” Astaire said.

The fight was originally scheduled for Sept. 3, but Tyson’s imbroglio with Cayton forced the postponement. Another month’s delay, Astaire said, would have meant putting the fight indoors in London. As it is, early October in London could be rainy and cold anyway.

Steve Lott, one-time Tyson cornerman (Tyson hasn’t told him yet whether he’s still on the varsity), said: “What does it matter if the weather’s bad, for a 90-second fight?”

Bruno, immensely popular in England, will nonetheless be a decided underdog. Whereas Tyson, 22, will be going for his 36th straight victory, Bruno, 26, is 32-2 and lost a 1986 London title bout to WBA champion Tim Witherspoon.

Boxing Notes

The Forum launches a $225,000 super-lightweight tournament Tuesday with John Montes (37-4) of Anaheim meeting Tim Burgess (12-4-2) of Brooklyn in the opener. . . . The Chino Recreation Boxing Club hosts an Aug. 20, 15-bout Albert Davila Legends of Boxing amateur show at Chino. . . . It looks as if onetime Tyson confidante Jose Torres may have been dropped from the A team. Tyson’s new literary/entertainment agent, Norman Brokaw, says Torres’ book on Tyson--for which he was paid a $350,000 advance--”is not going to happen.”

Tomas Perez of Santa Ana (18-3) and Kenny Lopez (16-6) of San Jose will fight at the Irvine Marriott Aug. 22 for the vacant state super-welterweight championship. . . . Australia’s heavyweight champion, Dean Waters, and his trainer/father, Cec Waters, were charged by police this week with conspiracy to murder the elder Waters’ wife, according to Sydney police. . . . Harry Kabakoff, slimmed from 303 pounds to 185 pounds, launches his Hollywood Palladium boxing promotions Sept. 1, with a card to be named Monday. . . . Most of the U.S. Olympic boxing team meets Canada’s Olympians Sunday at Charlotte, N.C., on an NBC show. Super-heavyweight Riddick Bowe, light-middleweight Roy Jones and bantamweight Kennedy McKinney are all nursing minor hand and elbow injuries and won’t compete.

Welterweight Mark Breland, in his first appearance since his draw against Marlon Starling in June, knocked out Pablo Baez in the first round at Chicago Thursday night. . . . Edwin Rosario says he wants a rematch against Julio Cesar Chavez after his TKO of Rafael Gandarilla in New York Thursday.