SAME DREAM, DIFFERENT FATE

by Nat Gottlieb

They came to Colorado Springs to compete on the last level playing field they would ever encounter. Everybody had a fair chance to make the 2000 USA Olympic Boxing Team. Only the best survived.

Some took conventional routes to the Olympic Trials, like Rocky Juarez. He started boxing as a teenager at a local gym in Houston, competed for several years in national and international tournaments, and came to the Sydney Games as the reigning featherweight world champion.

Others, like Calvin Brock, Brian Viloria, Michael Bennett and Olanda Anderson took the road less traveled.

Brock learned to box from instructional videos his father ordered by mail. Bennett took up boxing just to stay in shape while serving a 15-year prison term for armed robbery. When he got out for good behavior after seven years, he was 27. Two years later he was an Olympian. Viloria was the first Olympic boxer from Hawaii in 44 years. Anderson was an active soldier in the U.S. Army, the only married guy on the team.

They brought with them varied credentials. Juarez and Viloria were certified blue chippers, both current world champions. Jermain Taylor and Jeff Lacy had very good, but not spectacular amateur careers. Two guys made the team as substitutes - Anderson replaced a boxer dismissed for conduct violations, David Jackson gained his berth in place of a world champion who quit for personal reasons.

A dozen guys, each chasing a common dream, each convinced that if they put their best stuff out there they would be justly rewarded. It would prove to be naïve thinking, at the Olympics and later in life. When they left the Team USA complex in Colorado Springs, they left something of themselves behind them, their innocence. They were about to enter a world where fair, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Some learned this lesson in Sydney. Juarez and Viloria were both victims of highly questionable judging. Others, like Brock would get his education the night he made his professional debut. In a USA Today story right after the Olympics, Brock was rated as the team member least likely to succeed as a pro. The story, coupled with the fact that he looked unimpressive when he was eliminated in his first Olympic bout, would hang a label on Brock that would set back his early career enormously.

Seven of Brock's teammates made their pro debuts in big fight venues - six at Madison Square Garden on the same televised card, "NIGHT OF THE OLYMPIANS" - Juarez at the Mohegan Sun Casino. Calvin Brock would go from an international stage in Sydney to a debut at the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, IL., where his purse was a not-so-grand $1,200, and he needed a road map to find the place.

Three of the Olympians would go on to win world championships, including bronze medalist Taylor, Lacy and Viloria. Navarro has fought twice for a world title, getting robbed once by a highly controversial decision in Japan, and losing a second attempt fair and square. With a 24-2 record and ranked 9th at junior bantamweight by Ring Magazine, he will get another chance.

A second chance is also in store for silver medalist Juarez, who lost a title fight to the great Marco Antonio Barrera on a razor thin split decision in May, but gets a rematch on Sept. 16. Brock, who had to fight in unglamorous venues like the Lowes Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., and various small-time casinos whose names he can't and doesn't want to remember, has defied the odds and will take his unbeaten record of 29-0 into the ring against heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko on Nov. 11. What goes around comes around: the venue is Madison Square Garden, where six of his teammates had a coming out party to which he was not invited. Maybe he'll invite them to see his fight.

Of the others, three tried professional boxing but have given up and hold regular jobs - bronze medalist Clarence Vinson, Bennett and Anderson. David Jackson was 7-1 as a pro when he tore up his knee last year, had surgery and resumed training in June. He is 30.

Ricardo Williams, a silver medalist, cashed in big time after the Olympics. He was signed to a $1.4 million bonus by promoter Lou DiBella, but showed a chronic aversion to training. He was a lackluster 10-2 when he pleaded guilty on charges of a conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to three years in prison in June of 2005. Williams has vowed to resume boxing when he is projected to be released in February of 2008, four months shy of his 28th birthday.

Among the world champions, only Taylor currently retains his title. Lacy and Viloria each lost their belts in stunning fashion this year. Lacy was a super middleweight champion, unbeaten in 21 fights when he traveled to England and got swamped by Joe Calzaghe in a unification fight. A pro scouting report issued shortly after the 2000 Olympics proved prophetic. It said of Lacy: "He is vulnerable to slick boxers." Calzaghe is a slick as they come.

Viloria's fall from grace was even more stunning. He was 18-0 and making his second junior flyweight title defense in Las Vegas on Aug. 10 when he got beat in surprisingly easy fashion by a little known Mexican fighter, Omar Nino Romero. Romero came into the fight with a 23-2-1 record, had never fought outside of his home country and was fired from his job at a Guadaljara printing company because he asked for time off to train for the championship bout. Romero likes his new job as champ much better, but there was a rematch clause in the contract and the Mexican could be unemployed again if Viloria brings his "A" game to the second fight.

The head coach of the 2000 Olympic team, 60-year-old Tom Mustin, tries to keep up on his boys when he has a chance, which isn't as often as he'd like. Mustin has trained amateurs at the Tacoma Boxing Club in Washington State for 33 years and produced 35 national champions and 11 world title holders, all the while maintaining a full-time job as assistant circulation manager at the News Tribune in Tacoma on the graveyard shift.

It's been six years now, but Mustin can tell you down to the finest detail about each of his 12 boxers, and what his expectations for them where. "Going into the Olympics, I thought five of my guys had a chance for gold -- Rocky, Taylor, Viloria, Lacy and Bennett," Mustin said.

What he is unable to tell you is that one of them won gold. Mustin would have the dubious distinction of being the first U.S. boxing coach to not harvest a single Olympic gold medal since 1948. At an Olympic press conference he said: "I'll go down in history for the wrong reasons. We had a great training camp. We did a lot to turn things around. Unfortunately we'll be remembered for this."

Unfairly, it would seem. As was the case with Roy Jones Jr. at Seoul in 1988, and Evander Holyfield in the 1984 games in Los Angeles, Juarez was jobbed out of the gold by a biased referee.

"The thing I remember the most about Rocky's loss is the ref let his opponent foul him by holding nine times, we counted them," Mustin said. "What is supposed to happen with warnings and cautions is that after 6 warnings you are disqualified. Every time Rock hit the kid (Bekzal Sattakhanov of Kazakstan) to the body, the kid would hold on."

No warnings were issued by Russian referee Stanislav Kirsanov, who was later suspended from boxing for four years after a protest was filed by Team USA. Juarez tried to be upbeat in his post-fight press conference, "I feel in my heart I won the gold medal, so I don't really count it as a loss." In May, Juarez said virtually the same words after learning that his fight with Barrera, originally ruled a draw, was changed 20 minutes later to a loss because of scorecard error.

Mustin and Team USA had suffered a bitter blow earlier in the event when Viloria, who figured strongly to win a medal, got eliminated before the quarterfinals by French boxer Brahim Aslouf, an apparent victim of inconsistent judging. What Mustin called a "massive" body attack by Viloria did not register as points with the judges.

"Viloria should have won," Mustin said. "The fight before his, the judges were counting body shots. His fight they didn't."

Mustin took Juarez's loss particularly hard. "Rocky was the hardest worker on the team," Mustin said. "Most of the guys had an aversion to weights. Rocky did everything we asked."

Mustin was a taskmaster coach, and some of his boxers did not take to his methods. Taylor left camp in a huff one day saying he hated the coach, came back the next day, hugged Mustin and said the team was like family to him.

"Jermain liked to play around a lot," Mustin said. "Jermain and Lacy got into this thing that they were going to try and knock everybody out, instead of boxing (for points)."

Promoter Gary Shaw scouted the Olympians while serving as chief operating officer for Main Events. Shaw traveled America for a year and a half following Olympic hopefuls from tournament to tournament. When the team was chosen, he went to Sydney and sat through every single bout, including ones without Americans. Shaw got to know the boxers, and like Mustin, remembers the Taylor-Lacy knockout contest.

"That is correct. Each was counting who was going to knock somebody out first, which is not a formula for success in the amateurs," said Shaw, who now has his own company, "Gary Shaw Productions."

Shaw wasn't watching the Olympians through the same lens as Mustin. The promoter was there strictly to judge which boxers had the style suitable to be successful pros, and to try and sign them. Taylor, Lacy, Juarez, Viloria and Williams were very high on his list.

"I went from tournament to tournament to see the fighters," said Shaw, who would eventually sign Lacy, Juarez and Mexican Francisco Bojado for Main Events. "One night I went to Scranton in a snow storm to see Taylor, Juarez and Lacy. I thought right then that Jermain would make it big in the pros."

Shaw also saw Lacy as a can't-miss pro, but not a stand-out amateur. "I always said, and Lacy knew it, I didn't even know if he was even going to make the team, but I was going to sign him whether he did or not," Shaw said. "He above all the others had a perfect pro style."

Williams, Shaw felt, was special, a kid who had it all. "Ricardo had sheer talent, you couldn't miss it. I tried to recruit him. Me and (manager) Shelly Finkel flew to his home in Cincinnati, made him a spectacular offer," Shaw said.

Williams got a better offer and signed with DiBella. It would prove to be money saved for Main Events. Shaw was at the Garden the night Williams made his pro debut. "He walked in with this whole entourage, and I said to myself this guy is trouble, not realizing the real trouble that lay ahead," Shaw said.

Mustin had a different kind of trouble with Brock. "Calvin was one of the hardest guys to get to buy into the system," Mustin said. "I had many arguments with his dad (Calvin's trainer), who was not a believer in our running methods. Calvin complained that we were overtraining him. He was down on me, didn't think I should be the coach. It was just sour grapes after he lost his first bout. Calvin was very difficult to work with."

Brock has a different take.

"After 13 years of (amateur) boxing and being a five-time national champion, certainly my dad and I knew what was best for me," Brock said for this story. "Tom wanted to train a 12-man team in 12 different weight classes all alike. He insisted on training everybody the same. I believe in working hard, obviously, but I require more rest than some boxers. A heavyweight takes longer to recuperate than a lightweight. I was burned out when the games started.."

Shaw also "I didn't rate Brock very high. I rated him high as a human being, and his father, too, but I didn't give him a lot of chance to be a top pro. He's done what he's done by working real hard," Shaw said.

Mustin was on the same page with Shaw about who had pro potential. "Taylor, because he was so big and he was a light middleweight in a light heavyweight's body, still is. Also, Viloria, Lacy and Williams," Mustin said.

Mustin and Shaw proved dead-on with their can't-miss-pros - Taylor, Viloria, and Lacy. Williams was also on their list, but proved to be a major disappointment even before he was jailed. For a brief time, though, Williams enjoyed an Olympic honeymoon with boxing and fans. His return from Sydney to his hometown in Cincinnati was recorded by the newspapers:

"Amid chants of 'U.S.A.!' Ricardo Williams Jr. received a champion-size homecoming Monday night," one report said, "stepping off his plane into the waiting arms of family, friends and well wishers.

"Cradling his 7-month-old son, Ricardo III, Williams lovingly placed his silver medal over his son's head and kissed the infant on the cheek. "'He's my biggest medal. I'm taking punches now, so he won't have to later,'" Williams said.

Williams did take punches, a lot more than a boxer with his talent should have. The $1.4 million bonus was a huge waste, and served as a wake up call to any promoter eyeballing Olympians from then on.

At his sentencing, Williams apologized in court to his family, the judge and the community. The last public words he said before going behind bars were haunting:

"There are a lot of people, a lot of kids, that looked up to me."

Everyone on the USA Boxing Team 2000 knew that feeling. Only a few can still say that today.