few believed in Antonio Cervantes Reyes when he went to seek his fortune in Venezuela, after a lackluster boxing career in Colombia. However, everyone finds the right time and the right people to forge their own destiny. To such an extent that Cervantes, Kid Pambele, He became, exactly 50 years ago, on October 28, 1972, the first Colombian world champion. A legend was born.
His legacy transcended borders, to the point that, in addition to Colombia, Venezuela and Panama have him in their affections. He successfully defended his crown on 18 occasions and extended his reign until August 1980, when he definitively lost the world title. junior welterweight against American Aaron Pryor.
However, not even in their own environment did they consider that they could go that far. “I thought something could be done with him, but today it would be a lie to say that he had something big planned. I never thought of him as a world champion,” the Venezuelan confessed. Ramiro MachadoPambelé’s representative in his glory years, to the journalist Estewil Quesada when it was 20 years since the fight that launched him to fame.
The first time that Pambelé fought for the title
In fact, just under a year earlier, Cervantes had gotten his first title shot. He did it against the Argentine Nicolino Loche, on December 11, 1971, at Luna Park in Buenos Aires (Argentina). He lost a unanimous decision, in 15 rounds.
“What a bad fight. You didn’t hit him… You stole my money”, Machado recounts that he told Pambelé after the fight. “I had to pay him out of pocket. We went to Buenos Aires without the businessmen paying us a bag, just for the radio and television rights for Colombia and Venezuela, and nobody was interested, ”he added.
But things happen for a reason. Pambelé was not the rival, originally, of the current champion, the Panamanian Alfonso ‘Peppermint’ Frazer, who had taken the crown from Locche in March 1972. The challenger, originally, was the Spanish Sunday Barrera Corpas. However, he lost to Tony Ortiz and the latter was announced as the opponent.
However, Machado was revived: he protested before the World Boxing Association. At that time it was said that Ortiz was not ranked, something that, 20 years after the fight, Machado denied.
“Ortiz was classified, only that Cervantes was second (the first was Bruno Arcari, from Italy, king of the WBC) and I demanded from Elías Córdoba that Frazer should defend the belt against the best classified available,” explained Machado.
The fight was preceded by a negotiation between Machado and Carlos Eleta, Frazer’s manager, who had no interest in the fight. In the end, the Venezuelan gave up half of Cervantes’ contract and the fight was scheduled for October 28, 1972, at the new panama gym.
“Eleta never had an adverse result occur to her. Frazer was the absolute favourite… Nobody gave a damn about Pambele. We, on the other hand, trust in victory. And if we lost, nothing happened, because when you risk nothing, you fear nothing”, assured Machado.
Cervantes and Frazer knew each other very well. And not as rivals, but as rope partners. The two arrived in Caracas in search of fortune in boxing. The Panamanian arrived alone. Pambelé was taken by a Venezuelan businessman León Figueroa.
“Pambele? I heard the name five years ago when they told me that I was going to share a room with a Colombian nicknamed that way. It was in Caracas, in 1967, when we both went to fight and they put us up at Doña Bruna’s pension. We slept 15 days in the same room, bed next to bed, talking about so many things…” Frazer recalled, also in a talk with Estewil Quesada.
From what he saw at the time, Frazer did not consider Pambele to be a high-risk opponent and believed that he could defend his world title without any problems.
“Each one went his own way and suddenly they told me that he was fighting in the first defense with Antonio Cervantes. At that time, I never believed that he would dethrone me, ”said Peppermint. “I knew Antonio was good. I felt better. He lost to Nicolino Locche and I beat the Argentine and won the title for the first time. Everything was there to win,” he added.
“We shared everything. The morning jog at the Brígido Iriarte stadium, the practices, the meals. The happy moments and the sad ones. We were two foreigners fighting for the bran”, recalled, in turn, Pambelé himself.
After that match, Pambelé lost in a controversial match against Néstor Rojas and had to return to Colombia. But that fight stayed in Machado’s head, when later Cervantes’ father took him to the office looking for an opportunity.
Win a world title to save a fridge
At 11 in the morning of that October 28, 1972, Pambelé got on the scale to have her weight taken before the fight. He registered 138.5 pounds and with that he was ready for the fight that he was going to have that night. Frazer scored 138, two below the category limit.
An hour earlier, in a house in the Pablo VI neighborhood in Cartagena, Ceferina Reyes, Pambelé’s mother, was experiencing her own drama: a collector insistently knocked on the door. The family had taken out a refrigerator in installments, but was late. Then they came to take the device.
“Sir, please wait until Monday, I pray to God. Look, my son is Kid Pambelé and tonight he will fight and win the world boxing championship in Panama”, Ceferina told him. And so he managed to get a deadline until the following Monday. The fight was on a Saturday.
Ceferina clung to what her son was going to receive for the fight: $6,000, plus whatever could be raised for radio and television rights. A figure well below what they gave Frazer at the time, $50,000.
And it was normal. In addition to being the champion, Frazer came to the fight with a better record than Pambelé, 29 wins, one draw and four losses, with four knockouts, while the Colombian had 32 wins, one draw and nine losses, with 14 wins before the limit. .
The order from Frazer’s corner was to look for the knockout and that’s why Peppermint started throwing jabs with the idea of getting Pambelé out of control and thus ensuring the way to points in case the Colombian didn’t fall.
Peppermint defended the crown with some calm, until Pambelé changed her attitude and went on the attack, starting in the eighth round. A fundamental person in her career was the coach Melquiades ‘Tabaquito’ Sanzwho began to guide him since he reached Machado’s rope and made him go from a somewhat clumsy boxer to a champion for a long time.
Frazer took the penalty in the eighth and ninth. The radio broadcasts of the time began to show the aftermath of it. For Todelar, they traveled to Panama to broadcast the fight Edgar Perea and Melanio Porto Ariza. Meporto assured, microphone in hand, that he had heard Peppermint complaining in her corner. For his part, Napoleón Perea, the narrator of Caracol, also said on air that the Panamanian was hurt.
With the score in his favor, Frazer began to keep his distance, but Pambelé was on top of him. The clock hadn’t advanced much when the champion fell for the first time. The judge’s count reached four and Peppermint got to his feet, but it took him longer to get up than to receive a new blow that sent him to the ground again.
Dizzy and unreactive, Frazer listened to the count to six and stood up again, wanting nothing to do with the fight anymore. The referee of the fight, the Panamanian Isaac Herrera, prolonged the agony. And Pambelé launched a series of blows that made the belt change hands.
The fight, which was barely seen on television days later, because no one broadcast it live, remained in the memory of Colombian boxing fans, who at that time touched the sky. What there is no record of today is the whereabouts of the gloves that Pambelé used that day: Efraín César Herrera, a character who accompanied Cervantes in several of his fights, assured that he gave them to a Barranquilla fan from the Rebolo neighborhood. Herrera kept the robe and shirt.
And the fridge? She barely arrived at her house, the following Monday, Pambelé paid her in cash. When she arrived at the store, many people recognized him and began to entertain him. The collector who went to pick up the device even asked for his autograph.
50 years passed. Pambelé’s legend in the ring grew, eventually vanished because of his drug problems. Until one day Cervantes got tired of wandering around and settled in his house-estate in Turbaco, where he now rests, much more focused. Colombia’s first world boxing champion finally got used to his greatness.
Jose Orlando Ascencio
Sports Sub-Editor
@josasc
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