SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, 1976
Wilfred Benítez stands in the middle of a crowded ring at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, one of his home island’s largest venues. He’s wearing a robe with his name stitched on the back, awaiting the judges’ verdict in his junior welterweight title fight against reigning champion Antonio “Kid Pambele” Cervantes of Colombia. For 15 rounds, Benítez displayed the footwork of a salsa dancer and evaded nearly every one of Cervantes’s jabs, showing a defensive acumen that will earn him the nickname El Radar.
When the ring announcer declares him the winner in a split decision, Benítez raises his fists in triumph. His corner-men lift him high above the crowd and set a sparkling paper crown on his head. The theme to Chico and the Man, sung by Puerto Rico’s José Feliciano, blares in the stadium. At 17 years old, Benítez has just become the youngest world champion in boxing history — a record that will never be broken, now that 18 is the minimum age for a professional fighter.
“I feel happy, because since I was born, I have dedicated all of myself to boxing,” Benítez tells a TV broadcaster as his fans mill around the ring. “I dedicate this fight to Puerto Rico, Colombia, and all the countries that saw this fight. I dedicate it to my mother and especially to my father, who was the one who went through all the trouble for me.”
Three years later, in the same stadium, Benítez, who’d moved up in weight classes, would win another title, the welterweight championship, from Carlos Palomino. Howard Cosell, calling the fight for ABC, would praise the victory as “a sterling boxing demonstration.” Benítez, he would say, was “quicker with his hands, quicker with his feet.”
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, after the decline of Muhammad Ali, the welterweight and middleweight divisions were the most glamorous and competitive in boxing. They were dominated by the Four Kings: Roberto Durán, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, and Sugar Ray Leonard. To many boxing fans, though, Benítez was the fifth king. Ten months after defeating Palomino, he lost the title to Leonard, but he beat Durán and went the distance against Hearns. He won championships in three weight divisions.
Benítez earned millions of dollars as a boxer — $1.2 million alone for fighting Leonard (at the time the biggest purse ever for a nonheavyweight) and even more for Durán and Hearns. Puerto Ricans paraded through the streets of San Juan in his honor. But like so many fighters, he fought too long, pursuing dwindling purses that were still more generous than anything he could have earned without using his fists. After a 1986 bout in
