AN IMMIGRANT'S TALE

August 7, 2006 - by Ron Borges

Dennis Rappaport, a bellicose man even by boxing's pugnacious standards, calls Oleg Maskaev the new "Cinderella Man,'' comparing his comeback at 37 to that of one-time heavyweight champion James J. Braddock during the Depression. Perhaps, in a sense, his story will prove similar depending on how things turn out between Maskaev and reigning WBC champion Hasim Rahman on Aug. 12 but Cinderella, thankfully, never looked like this guy. Neither did the Cinderella Man, for that matter.

Maskaev is a cement block of a fellow. Squat. Square. Hard-lined and hard-nosed. He has the face of every Russian soldier you ever saw on the old black-and-white TV newsreels from back when a wall still separated East and West Berlin and guys like Maskaev stood at attention on one side of Checkpoint Charlie while a similarly unsmiling American soldier stood facing him on the other.

That was four decades ago but Maskaev still bears the distinctive hard-edged look of the Eastern bloc warrior, which he no longer is. Born in Kazakhstan, he served in the Russian Army when its empire spread throughout Eastern Europe and into Asia and once cold-cocked a young Vitali Klitschko in one round when he boxed for the Red Army team. But Maskaev has left his Russian roots behind him, having lived in the United States since 1995 and becoming a citizen two years ago. He may not be as American as apple pie but he's at least as American as a bowl of borscht and a hot dog.

So when he hears how his Aug. 12 "Cinderella ball'' with Rahman could lead to all four of the major heavyweight titles falling into the clutches of Eastern European champions, he throws the tiara down that Rappaport and manager Fred Kesch have tried to place atop his head and makes one thing clear - he doesn't mind being seen as the reincarnation of boxing's Cinderella Man but he wants no part of being considered Alien Man.

"I want to say I like this Cinderella story,'' Maskaev said recently.

"I like it a lot. But I would say I'm a proud Russian-American. I'm a citizen of America. Of United States. I have four kids and the last of them, she's an American too. She was born here. I have a great opportunity here to get a good education for my kids and a house and to make my wife happy. She's really happy to be here.

"I left USSR in 1994, 1995 and I had my old (Russian) passport and it expired. Then I lost (fights) but the opportunity came to get a green card and I used it. I got the green card and then in five years I applied for citizenship and everything worked out good. This is a part of the American Dream.''

So Maskaev's Cinderella story is really not so much one of wonder but more the classic hardscrabble Immigrant's Tale, one repeated so many times it has become an American fable as bright and shiny as Cinderella's carriage. It is the dream of desperate people in dififcult circumstances around the world to come to America to seek their fortune. Oleg Maskaev is among the latest so Cinderella Man II wants to make clear to Rahman and to the American sporting public that if he does find the glass slipper Aug. 12 it will be one safely held in American hands.

With Sergei Lyakovich (WBO), Nikolai Valuev (WBA) and Wladimir Klitschko (IBF), Vitali's younger brother, wearing the other three heavyweight title belts it has become popular to talk of an Eastern bloc incursion into a division long controlled by American heavyweights and to a degree its a valid point, one explainable in many ways not the least of them being that most guys who might today have become heavyweight champion are instead playing tight end, safety or linebacker in the NFL or power forward in the NBA. So goes the evolutionary process in sports.

So while Maskaev has willingly embraced Rappaport's description of him in Cinderella-like terms, he wants to make clear his comeback from the dark shadows of boxing failure after suffering five knockout losses earlier in his career has taken place on American soil, engineered by American managers and trainers and accomplished by a proud American citizen by choice not birth who crossed the border legally into the United States and hopes soon to crossover to broader appeal among boxing fans as what Rahman is now - the only American champion in the division.

Jingoism sells these days because talk of illegal immigrants and closing the borders abounds in America. They are not, however, a part of sport and boxing is the better for it. Certainly Maskaev is as well because where he was headed before Rappaport and Kesch took over his career several years ago was nowhere, regardless of what his zip code was.

"His career could best be described as probably being the most mismanaged and misguided in history,'' the bombastic Rappaport insisted one recent night over dinner in Las Vegas. "He had an illustrious amateur career in Russia. He won all kinds of medals. In his very first professional fight (in 1993) he fought a boxer (Alex Miroshnichenko) who was 23-0 and an Olympic silver medalist. Oleg knocked him out (in three rounds).

"In his third fight (really his fourth) he fought an undefeated heavyweight (American Robert Hawkins). Oleg knocked him out. In his fifth fight he fought a great prospect who was 23-1 (Joe Thomas). Oleg beat him. Then these rocket scientists managing him put him in with Oliver McCall in his seventh fight. The guy had knocked out Lennox Lewis in two rounds a couple of years before and they put Oleg, who should have been in six round fights, in with him. He gets stopped in one round. That's the essence of his career. Peaks and valleys.''

That continued with wins like a spectacular 1999 knockout of Rahman when both were young prospects and KO losses to guys like David Tua, Kirk Johnson, Lance Whitaker and Corey Sanders. The latter came four years ago at a time when Maskaev was unfocused and at 33 beginning to see his dream of success in the boxing ring drifting toward mediocrity. He had been stopped in three of his previous five fights and his confidence was, quite naturally, at a low ebb and it did not improve when his long-time trainer, the well-respected New York city fight man Bob Jackson, told him in as a kindly a fashion as possible that perhaps he should consider seeking daytime employment.

Having no real idea what that might involve, Maskaev continued to come to the gym any way and Jackson continued to urge him to retire until one day young Victor Valle, Jr. worked the mitts with this lonely looking guy in the corner who seemed to have no one helping him.

What he saw was something he felt he could work with, a bit of a robotic guy but one with talent locked underneath a rusty exterior. What Valle believed was that Maskaev was not a natural. He was a creation and as such he needed far more consistent work than he'd been receiving. Armed with the kind of faith one finds only in boxing gyms and on casino floors, Valle approached first Jackson, who said he had no interest in working with Maskaev any more, and then Rappaport, who once helped direct the career of heavyweight challenger and multi-million dollar earner Gerry Cooney along with Valle's father. Soon Kesch joined forces with them and thus began in Lewiston, Me., a town made famous for a minute by two heavyweights named Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston over 40 years ago, what is now a most unlikely 10-fight winning streak.

Admittedly none of the names on Maskaev's list of victims have come from the division's highest echelon but who did Braddock beat before the night he outwrestled Max Bear to become an American icon during the sad days of the Depression? John Griffin, John Henry Lewis and Art Lasky. Not much, frankly, and the same can now be said of Maskaev.

There's trial horse Sedrick Fields and the Brit Julius Francis, who once was destroyed by Mike Tyson in the same amount of time it took Maskaev to get rid of him. There was a one-time prospect named David Defiagbon and finally last November Sinan Sam, from whom he won a hard-fought decision in Hamburg, Germany to claim the WBC's No. 1 ranking and a guaranteed shot at Rahman, or whomever held the title within the next year.

It turned out to be the same man Maskaev knocked out of the ring and into the lap of HBO broadcaster Jim Lampley on Nov. 6, 1999. It turned out to be Rahman, who was once a bit of a Cinderella Man himself when he knocked out an unsuspecting Lennox Lewis in the middle of the South African veldt a few years back with one blind-eyed punch.

Now he is all that stands between Maskaev and a real Cinderella story. A Coming to America story. If he can find it inside himself to do again what he did to Hasim Rahman in 1999, if he can keep his own fragile chin from being exposed by one of Rahman's big right hands before his own opportunity to land comes, then Oleg Maskaev will have written a fairy tale of his own making. Not a Cinderella fable really but a more familiar story.

An Immigrant's Tale.