MANHATTAN BEACH – Mike Perez is a Cuban heavyweight who defected to Mexico, moved to Ireland and trains at Big Bear.
He isn’t running from anything, not even from Nov. 2.
That was the night Perez fought Magomed Abdusalamov in New York. Abdusalamov is a Russian who had knocked out every one of the 18 pros he had fought. This time he ran into a stronger man, but kept coming. His manager wanted the fight stopped after the eighth round, but it went the full 10.
Perez won, and Abdusalamov left Madison Square Garden alone and vomited on the sidewalk.
A taxi took him to a hospital. A blood clot developed on his brain. Doctors put him into a coma, and then Abdusalamov suffered a stroke. He is in a rehab facility in West Hempstead, N.Y. No one knows whether he will speak or walk again.
Whether Abduslamov should have been hospitalized first, or at least examined more closely, is a question people still ask.
Perez fights again Jan. 18, in Montreal, against Carlos Takam. He will wear “Mago” on his trunks and will donate a good hunk of the purse to Abdusalamov’s family. He has his bruises, too.
“When I was told what happened, it was hard,” Perez said the other day, at a joint appearance with middleweight champ Gennady Golovkin. “I’m dedicating the next fight to him. He was a warrior.”
“Different fighters react different ways in that situation,” said Abel Sanchez, who trains Perez and Golovkin. “Sergey Kovalev (whose punches caused the death of Roman Simakov in 2011) was able to deal with it. But Gabriel Ruelas, after Jimmy Garcia died (in 1995) was never the same guy.”
Emile Griffith’s aggression left him after Benny Paret died at his hands. Ray Mancini remained haunted by the death of Duk Koo Kim.
“When Mike came back to camp it took awhile for everything to heal,” Sanchez said, “and maybe for the feelings to heal a little bit.”
Could referee Benjy Esteves have stopped the fight?
“Mike was dominating early and late,” Sanchez said. “But there was a guy with 18 wins and 18 knockouts that was standing right there who could end the fight with one shot. It was a brutal fight for both guys. It was not something that was one-sided. Mike hit him with a hard jab in the 10th. Maybe then – but, like I said, the other guy’s record indicates that you give him the shot.”
Yet the grim reality is that Perez raised his profile because of what happened to Abdusalamov. Menace arouses curiosity.
Perez, at 235 pounds, is a muscular, skilled boxer in a flabby, impoverished division, which became even softer when Vitali Klitschko gave up his belt in order to straighten out the chaos in his native Ukraine.
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