Boxing: With a pig in his back yard and chickens in the front, heavyweight
                    legend Teofilo Stevenson isn't wallowing in wealth, but what he has in
                    stature money can't buy.

                    By Gary Marx
                    Special To The Sun

                    HAVANA - Teofilo Stevenson is one of the greatest heavyweight fighters
                    in history, a Cuban sports legend and hero of the revolution a zillion times
                    over.

                    He was Fidel Castro's towering champion, a pugilist who took home three
                    Olympic gold medals, dismantling American boxers along the way.

                    With a punishing left jab and powerful right, Stevenson was the communist
                    bloc's answer to Bruce Jenner and Mark Spitz. He was so loyal to Castro
                    and his socialist ideals that he reportedly turned down millions to fight in
                    the United States.

                    But times have changed since the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving tiny
                    Cuba to fend for itself, and I wondered what had become of the mighty
                    champion.

                    Had he escaped the cruel fate that has ensnared so many American
                    professional boxers, from the punch-drunk Jerry Quarry to the
                    rage-fueled Mike Tyson? Was a socialist icon just as disposable as a
                    capitalist one, coddled as long as he was needed to sell something - in this
                    case a political system - then discarded?

                    In truth, I wasn't sure what to expect as I pulled up to Stevenson's home
                    in what is regarded as an exclusive Havana suburb, complete with its
                    potholes and crumbling facades.

                    I arrived just before noon. The price of interviewing Stevenson, I was
                    told, was buying him a meal.

                    Now 50, the former champion lives with his wife and 8-year-old son in a
                    home given him by a grateful government. With four bedrooms, a living
                    room, kitchen and outdoor patio, Stevenson's home is beautiful for Cuba
                    but hardly luxurious.

                    He stood out front chewing a cigar. He was tall and lean, more like an
                    aging former basketball star than a retired heavyweight. He wore ill-fitting
                    slacks, scruffy black loafers and a short-sleeved shirt with a dime-sized
                    hole in the left shoulder.

                    Stevenson waved me inside. He had a few chores to take care of. Out
                    back was his 480-pound pig, Malu. Stevenson filled a trough with feed
                    and water.

                    "She'll have another litter or two," the champ said. "And then ..." He slid
                    his index finger across his throat.

                    Stevenson appeared more interested in feeding his pig than in talking
                    boxing, so I walked inside to a small room that is a shrine to his athletic
                    career.

                    A dozen neatly framed photographs, plaques and other memorabilia hung
                    on the walls. One photograph captured the champion with a smiling
                    Castro, his thick arm raised in triumph. A Cuban magazine cover naming
                    him the nation's top athlete of the 20th century hung nearby.

                    One wall told the story of Stevenson's signature triumph - his devastation
                    of highly touted U.S. boxer Duane Bobick at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
                    There was Bobick, his left eye swollen shut, reeling backward from a
                    Stevenson blow. Another photograph showed the American fighter on his
                    hands and knees, dazed.

                    "Some of them gave me a little more resistance than others," Stevenson
                    said as he ambled inside the house. "But it was only because I wasn't
                    training right. When I was in shape, no one could touch me."

                    Still standing tall

                    Few experts would challenge Stevenson's self-assessment or his place as
                    a Cuban sports icon. More than a decade after his last fight, he still
                    receives adulation and wants visitors to know it.

                    The champ pulled out a sword that had been presented to him days earlier
                    in honor of his contribution to sports, culture and the socialist system.

                    "Look at this," he said, unsheathing the blade.

                    He rooted among the pillows on his couch, digging out the proclamation
                    that went with the sword. After I skimmed it, Stevenson shoved it back
                    under the couch and disappeared.

                    I walked out front, where a dozen chickens pecked at the lawn. Two men
                    on bicycles stopped to sell red snapper, squid and octopus hanging off
                    their handlebars.

                    I hesitated, and Stevenson reappeared. He shuffled toward me, a Panama
                    hat now perched atop his head. He grabbed the octopus.

                    "You want it?" he asked. "Buy it. It's delicious. I'll prepare it for you."

                    But I declined, thinking of the interview. Stevenson wandered back inside
                    for a seeming eternity and, just as suddenly, reappeared. He needed to
                    get to a gym across the city to help train a contingent of foreign boxers. I
                    could come along.

                    As we drove along Havana's sweeping seaside boulevard, I began asking
                    Stevenson about his life and career. But his mind was elsewhere as he
                    ogled every woman we passed.

                    He gave a few facts. Born in 1952 in the small coastal town of Puerto
                    Padre, Stevenson was one of five children raised by his father, an
                    immigrant from the island of St. Vincent, and his Cuban mother.

                    Stevenson's father was a brawny man who boxed for fun and loaded
                    325-pound sacks of sugar onto ships for a living. Though poor, Stevenson
                    said he always had enough to eat.

                    "Every Sunday we'd go to the beach with a big pot of rice, beans and
                    shrimp," he recalled.

                    Growing up, his favorite sport was basketball, but he ended up in boxing
                    because he was a natural. His first fight took place when he was 13. A
                    year later, he was the Cuban junior national champion.

                    By then he had been discovered by national sports officials and sent to
                    Havana, where he trained with the legendary Alcides Sagarra. But
                    Stevenson would not reminisce.

                    "They taught me how to hold my hands, how to make a fist and how to
                    swing my arms," was all he said of his training.

                    Whatever he learned was used to supplement his great physical gifts. At 6
                    feet 4 inches, he had a very long reach, an important attribute in amateur
                    boxing, where scoring points with jabs is more important than power
                    punching.

                    Stevenson's fists are gigantic, and he had quick hands and great balance.

                    "You could see fear in the opponent's eyes before the fight ever started,"
                    said Bob Yalen, director of ESPN's boxing coverage.

                    At 20, Stevenson faced Bobick in the Olympic quarterfinals. The
                    American had won 60 consecutive fights, but Stevenson pounded him.
                    Bobick fell first to a flurry of body shots, then hit the canvas a second time
                    after Stevenson nailed him with a crushing right to the jaw.

                    He later beat Ion Alexe of Romania to win the gold medal.

                    Stevenson won a second gold medal in 1976 by defeating highly regarded
                    Romanian heavyweight Mircea Simon. The Romanian backpedaled and
                    avoided the champion through the first two rounds, but Stevenson
                    eventually lured Simon in.

                    "I let him attack me and he opened up," Stevenson recalled. "That's when
                    it happened" - an overhand right that ended the fight.

                    Four years later, Stevenson won a third gold at the U.S-boycotted
                    Moscow Olympics. He was ready to try for an unprecedented fourth
                    straight gold at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, but the Cubans and
                    Russians boycotted the Games.

                    Stevenson retired in 1988 as one of only three boxers to win three
                    successive Olympic golds. But the fight that never took place is the most
                    intriguing of Stevenson's career.

                    It's no secret that U.S. boxing promoters wanted Stevenson to defect and
                    fight the best American professionals. His heyday coincided with the
                    careers of George Foreman, Joe Frazier and Ken Norton.

                    But promoters and boxing fans really wanted a bout between Stevenson
                    and Muhammad Ali. Stevenson reportedly was offered several million
                    dollars to fight Ali.

                    The fight never happened.

                    Stevenson's stock line is that he turned down the bout because of his
                    loyalty to Castro, and that he valued his country's adoration more than the
                    things that money can buy.

                    But as we drove through Havana, past majestic but crumbling colonial
                    buildings and children playing baseball with sticks, Stevenson offered a
                    slightly different explanation.

                    'Money is a trap'

                    "I didn't need the money because it was going to mess up my life," he said.
                    "For professional boxers, the money is a trap. You make a lot of money,
                    but how many boxers in history do we know that died poor? The money
                    always goes into other people's hands."

                    According to Stevenson, he and Ali also couldn't agree on the fight's
                    format. Stevenson was used to the three-round amateur bouts. He said he
                    offered to fight five three-round matches or three five-rounders.

                    Ali's handlers, he said, wanted a standard 15-round heavyweight title
                    fight.

                    Angelo Dundee, Ali's longtime trainer, scoffed at Stevenson's assertions.
                    Ali would have faced Stevenson under any circumstances, Dundee said.
                    But he said there were never any serious negotiations for a fight.

                    "Castro doesn't allow professional boxing," Dundee said. "There was so
                    much interest. Everybody wanted it. It was one of those mythical fights. It
                    was just talk."

                    Boxing experts today still salivate over the idea. Yalen says Ali was too
                    strong and fast even for Stevenson. Dundee said his fighter would have
                    "done a number" on the Cuban.

                    But Emanuel Steward, the legendary trainer who will head the 2004 U.S.
                    Olympic boxing team, has a different view. He said Ali might have had
                    trouble landing punches against the taller man.

                    "Ali was the greatest, but Stevenson would have been the biggest threat
                    that he faced in the ring," Steward said. "If you made a mistake,
                    [Stevenson] was ready to explode. He could fire that right hand at any
                    moment."

                    For his part, Stevenson offered nothing but praise for Ali. Asked how he
                    would have approached the fight, Stevenson struggled.

                    "[Ali] was the best," Stevenson said. "He didn't have any weaknesses."

                    Could he have beaten Ali? Stevenson paused.

                    "It would have been a draw," he said with a smile.

                    Stevenson's three gold medals alone would have given him a unique place
                    in this sports-crazed country. But the suggestion that he turned down
                    millions to fight Ali elevated his stature to mythic proportions.

                    As we parked outside one of the many sports schools set up since the
                    1959 Cuban revolution, a guard spotted Stevenson, threw out his hand
                    and ushered the champion inside, where three crude boxing rings were set
                    up.

                    The gym walls displayed the names of every Cuban who has won a junior
                    world boxing title. The list also includes the Cuban team's overall medal
                    count at each championship.

                    "First place, second place, first place ... " Stevenson read as he strolled
                    the length of the gym.

                    Unlike in the U.S., boxing in Cuba is not big business. It is, however, a
                    very big deal. Despite its billions in foreign debt, the nation pours its
                    resources into special schools.

                    As anachronistic as it sounds, Castro uses Cuban athletes' success as his
                    proof that socialism is superior to capitalism. International victories are
                    portrayed as triumphs of the revolution, as if Castro himself put on the
                    gloves and pounded his opponent into submission.

                    Besides his government-issued home in Havana, Stevenson has a country
                    home and drives a government-issued car, a rare privilege in Cuba. The
                    champion appears to come and go as he pleases and gets paid for doing
                    little apparent work.

                    His official title is vice president of the Cuban Boxing Federation. He
                    insisted he goes to the office every day. But an acquaintance said
                    Stevenson spends most of his time doing little more than being himself.

                    We ended up at a hotel bar, where I hoped I had him cornered at last.

                    Stevenson ordered a double shot of rum. "That way you won't have to
                    walk back so often," he told the waiter.

                    I began snapping photographs, but he waved me off.

                    "I don't want you taking pictures of me drinking and smoking," he said.
                    "It's a bad example for our youth."

                    Another half-hour, a third double shot of rum. Stevenson's eyes were
                    bloodshot. He watched rock videos on a big-screen TV.

                    It was 6 before we left. I paid the $27 bar tab, but Stevenson was hungry
                    and insisted on dinner. I pressed some cash into his hand and told him I
                    had another engagement.

                    A few days later, I asked Stevenson through an acquaintance if I could
                    meet with him again to ask more questions. Days passed before I heard
                    back.

                    I was told the champion would see me again if I'd pay him some money.

                    I said no.

                    Gary Marx is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

                    Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun