Boxing distills and illuminates the essence of an athlete. There's nowhere to hide. Boxers live and perform at the extremes. They provide us with answers about a given contest, but more important, they ask us fundamental questions about human narratives. What does this person really stand for? How far will he go to defend it?

Brin-Jonathan Butler

Categorized in : Live Hide Important Boxing

While Fidel Castro used to deliver his marathon seven-hour speeches in Havana, Cubans used to joke that if Spanish lacked a future tense, their leader would be speechless. He was only fluent in broken promises, they lamented.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

promises future broken leader

As far as cities go, Havana is a festering treasure chest, a primary color.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

far go treasure color

In Old Havana, the names of the streets before the revolution provided a glimpse into the city's state of mind. You might have known someone who lived on the corner of Soul and Bitterness, Solitude and Hope, or Light and Avocado.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

you light soul hope

I was told before my first trip that no city in the world offered the dreams you could have sleeping in Havana. But nobody warned me that Havana also always feels like an exhausting nightmare that never quite fulfills the promise of what it's threatening you with.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

city dreams me you

Both for Havana's beauty and decay, it's very hard to restrain yourself from staring everywhere you look.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

yourself look you beauty

Anyone can see why an elite athlete would want to leave a small, impoverished country where their skills were effectively uncashed winning lottery tickets. All they had to do was wash ashore almost anywhere else in the world and cash in. Yet the vast majority of Cuban boxers - and Cuban athletes in general - despite that incentive, stayed.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

small winning country world

Mike Tyson notoriously looked for a way out against Evander Holyfield when it was clear Holyfield had his number. Suddenly, Tyson's cowardice in gnawing off Holyfield's ear overshadowed nearly everything he had accomplished as a fighter.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

against everything fighter way

'What comes next?' is the constant question I'm asked by outsiders eager to travel to the island. During the eleven years I traveled to Havana, very few Cubans I met on the island ever bothered to verbalize this question.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

question island next travel

Bullfighting is every bit as ghoulish and savage as its critics warn, but it is equally as powerful and moving as its supporters insist. Perhaps the most vexing aspect about it is that neither group is wrong: they are both telling the truth.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

group powerful truth moving

Ali vs. Stevenson would have served as a symbolic battle between the United States and Cuba, capitalism and communism: Castro's values instilled in his boxers pitted against the values of 'merchandise' boxers from the rest of the world.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

rest communism battle world

When Castro was put on trial in 1953 by Batista's government and asked who was intellectually responsible for his first attempt at insurrection, he dropped the name of the poet Jose Marti.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

name who poet government

Trejo is one of the oldest boxing gyms in Cuba; it's outdoor, and every great champion the country has produced has passed through and was forged in the open air.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

great champion boxing country

Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

eyes look pain tears

Is Duran's 'No Mas' a more defining moment in his career than his victory over Sugar Ray Leonard in their first fight? For many, it is.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

career fight moment victory

How much abuse is a fighter expected to endure before he can be allowed to show some concern for his own welfare? Anyone who has been around fighters knows they all share the same secret: They are more afraid of embarrassment and humiliation than injury. Do fans and writers use this fact against them in what we celebrate or criticize?

Brin-Jonathan Butler

own fighter celebrate fans

In the documentary 'Facing Ali,' nearly half the fighters involved required subtitles despite speaking English, their speech slurred by the physical toll of their ring lives. This was their reward for testing their furthermost physical and mental boundaries.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

english ring reward speech

Punching your weight is one of boxing's most sensible rules. It's a handy one to abide by whether your battles lie in or out of a ring.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

rules your lie boxing

Many of the greatest Cuban boxing champions since the revolution triumphed on the island resisted the temptation to leave Cuba and, in some cases, defied any suggestion they were tempted in the first place. Most famously, Teofilo Stevenson rejected multi-million dollar offers to leave his island to fight Muhammad Ali.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

fight place revolution boxing

Where the 'Bay of Pigs' invasion failed, undoubtedly the tourist invasion will succeed in forever changing the landscape of island. What comes next in Cuba? The answer is that many Cubans aren't waiting around to find out.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

will landscape succeed waiting

My documentary 'Split Decision' examines Cuban-American relations, and the economic and cultural paradoxes that have shaped them since Castro's revolution, through the lens of elite Cuban boxers forced to choose between remaining in Cuba or defecting to America.

Brin-Jonathan Butler

choose revolution decision america