Boxer's problems a long time in coming

(Originally appeared on Sports-Central.org, 2003)

After defeating Eugene Johnson in a March 1999 bout, boxer Paul Spadafora sat in the fitness center at the Palace Inn in Monroeville, talking to a member of his entourage.

The guy, who had worked in Spadafora’s corner during that night’s fight, helped trigger a riot when he took a swing at one of Johnson’s cornermen after the final bell.

At the time, Spadafora had made two appearances on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights and was angling for more TV fights and a possible lightweight title shot. Given that, he was mindful the evening’s fracas would be of no help.

Even though he let his supporter know that the incident was unacceptable, Spadafora knew his hanger-on was merely following the code of the rough McKees Rocks neighborhood where they grew up.

“Hey,” Spadafora told him. “I know you got my back.”

The moral of this story is that you can take the fighter out of the street, but you can’t always take the street out of the fighter. And, in Spadafora’s case, you couldn’t even take him entirely out of the street.

These days, Paul Spadaora has a lot more tattoos than he did the night I talked to him in the basement of the Palace Inn. He has a lot more trouble, too.

The former lightweight champion was charged Monday in the shooting Sunday morning of his girlfriend, a tragedy that left the woman fighting for her life in critical condition at Allegheny General Hospital.

Spadafora has been able to find trouble more easily than any other recent-vintage boxer with the possible exception of Mike Tyson. Of course, Spadafora has had a lot more help.

The shooting was Spadafora’s second brush with the law last weekend. On Friday, he was charged with public lewdness when, according to police, he was urinating in public.

During the mid-1990s there were a couple of incidents, mostly the by-product of being a tough kid growing up in a tough neighborhood.

In 1996, Spadafora was a passenger in a vehicle hit by gunfire from a police officer. One of the cop’s bullets pierced his leg, which eliminated the boxer from a probable appearance in the Atlanta Olympic Games.

But an incident in which Spadafora did nothing wrong – legally at least – was perhaps more telling about the boxer’s poor taste in friends.

He posted bail for a man charged with dealing drugs. When the suspect was mistakenly released, Spadafora told police the now-fugitive accused drug dealer was an old buddy.

It says something about Spadafora that a man charged with selling drugs could use his one phone call to contact the IBF lightweight champion of the world. Mostly, it says the fighter never cut himself loose from those who might drag him down.

Let’s be clear, I’m not making excuses for Spadafora here. Ironically, this happened in October, which was Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the fighter is accused of one of the most heinous examples of that type of crime.

Spadafora’s story – that his girlfriend was shot by a robber – is unlikely enough, considering the shooting took place around 6 on Sunday morning, a time when most self-respecting robbers are asleep. But the eyewitness accounts released by the Associated Press make the fighter’s version of events seem even more implausible.

There are two things both Spadafora and Allegheny County police agree on. One is that the girlfriend was driving his SUV when she went over a median strip and flattened two of its tires.

The other is that he was pissed off about it.

No one saw the shooting, but at least one witness heard a shot and saw the girlfriend call for help and say she had just been shot. The witness said Spadafora threatened him when he tried to stem the woman’s bleeding by applying direct pressure.

A witness – the Associated Press report doesn’t make clear whether this is the original witness or a second one – said Spadafora tried to prevent the witness from using a cellular telephone to make a 911 call.

That’s not generally the kind of behavior associated with a man whose girlfriend has just been shot by a mugger. But it is what you might see from a man who has just shot his girlfriend.

Ultimately, that’s for a court to decide. But I’m not inclined to offer Spadafora much sympathy if he’s guilty.

If that happens, it would be more of a waste from Spadafora’s point of view, considering the fact that his success as a fighter gave him an opportunity to get a phone number that isn’t common knowledge to suspected drug dealers and to employ cornermen who don’t start riots during boxing matches.

As it turned out, the Palace Inn fiasco didn’t hurt Spadafora much at the time. His very next fight, in December 1999, brought him the lightweight title, which he held until earlier this year until he relinquished it to have a go in the welterweight division.

I can’t say I know Spadafora well – I’ve met him only a few times – but he seemed to me an earnest young man, wrapped up in the joy of getting paid to do something he had fun at.

“I was fighting all my life for free,” he told me that night. “I’m going to be one of those guys who fights until my trainers say, ‘You’ve got to stop, you’re getting punchy.’”

Now, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that his career is likely to have a different ending.

There’s no doubt Spadafora is proud of being from the Pittsburgh area. He co-opted the “Pittsburgh Kid” moniker once used by 1940s-era light-heavyweight champ Billy Conn and fought his title bouts in Pittsburgh when possible, even when he knew bigger paydays and greater exposure could be had in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Loyalty is one of the guy’s long suits, for good and for bad.

Even if he had shaken himself loose from the friends of his hardscrabble youth, he might still be up on charges and his girlfriend might still be lying on a hospital bed.

But the fact that Spadafora continued to surround himself with people who still followed the “code of the street” probably made a tragedy like Sunday’s shooting inevitable.

After all, when a story begins with a sentence that contains the words “boxer” and “entourage,” the ending rarely turns out to be a happy one.