Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9309050238
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long
\ Wareing's Gym occupies two floors at the end of a pleasant little strip mall here, seven blocks from the high-rise hotels and tacky shops running along Atlantic Avenue that fronts the concrete boardwalk and the ocean beyond.
Inside the gym, it becomes clear very quickly that this is no lightweight health club. It isn't designed for customers who want to catch an aerobics class or two a week as they car-pool back and forth from Brownies and the bridge club.
No, Wareing's patrons are serious physical fitness freaks. More iron gets thrown around in here than in some industrial sections of Pittsburgh. The banks of stair machines and exercise bicycles are used so relentlessly that it's a wonder they don't have to hose them down to cool them at the end of business hours.
At any time of day, there is more muscle and less fat inside these walls than in any three major-league baseball clubhouses combined.
Over there, pumping away on one of the stationary bikes, tuned in on his headset to the mellow sounds of Peabo Bryson, is the baddest of the bad at Wareing's. Occasionally, two gold-capped front teeth flash appreciatively as he admires one of the more comely female exercisers as she goes through her routine.
Nobody bothers this dude, one of the few African-Americans in the gym, although several nod or smile as they pass by on the way to their next test of sinew.
They understand that this man's mandate for exercise is more important than most. The success or failure of his training may well have upwards of $2.5 million riding on it.
But Pernell "Sweetpea" Whitaker from Norfolk's grim Young Park housing project and late of swankier Virginia Beach, a five-time world champion fistfighter in three weight divisions, winner of 201 amateur bouts and possibly this state's most famous athlete, says his Friday night engagement with the fearsome Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez is of greater consequence than mere dollars.
"It ain't the money, man," Whitaker says. "I want to do this for the people. People want to see who's the best and for that, we're going to have to climb into the ring."
The best. There will be only one after 29-year-old Whitaker (32-1) and 31-year-old Chavez (87-0) are done hammering each other for Whitaker's World Boxing Council welterweight title in front of 70,000 patrons - many of them Mexicans or Mexican-Americans who adore Chavez - at San Antonio's Alamodome.
Chavez, of Culiacan, Mexico, is the reigning WBC super lightweight champion. He, too, has won five world titles in three weight classes. In 13 years of professional boxing, 75 of his victims have succumbed by knockout.
Some say Chavez is the world's best fighter, pound-for-pound. Some say Whitaker holds that distinction.
It is virtually unanimous among boxing authorities that these two are the best boxers alive who still are allowed to practice their dark trade in open commerce.
No, it isn't for the money - although there will be a pile of it for the taking, assuming that pay-per-view cable sales, proceeds of which the combatants will share, go as swimmingly as expected. Whitaker is fighting for history.
Chavez is as relentless as the surf, the left-hander Whitaker as elusive and maddening to his opponents as a will-o'-the-wisp. Chavez tries to reduce the size of the ring, bearing in to trap his foe and bludgeon him, suffocating him with a continuous barrage. Whitaker ducks and darts, counterpunches, then is gone.
Whitaker, a ring showman of the first order - the pugilistic heir to Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard - endeavors to humiliate his opponent. Make a fool of him. Embarrass him.
Chavez seeks to frighten and intimidate his opposite, then to crush him like an egg.
Whitaker claims that that will not work with him.
"For me, there is no fear," he said. "For me, there is only happiness. I'm glad to be here. After 21 years of doing this, there is no fear."
\ His time has come
Twenty-one years. Twenty-one years since the late Clyde Taylor dragged little Pete Whitaker, as he was and is known, into the gym and slapped some gloves on him so he could settle a dispute with another pint-sized warrior. Taylor knew potential when he saw it.
"I was a street fighter then," Whitaker said. "Eight, nine years old, living in the projects, you've got to know how to fight."
And that's all he has done since. Never has he been a member of a scholastic football, basketball, or baseball team, never has he been a Boy Scout, never has he held a job.
Not one.
The only work he's ever done is with his fists.
That doesn't even count the 215 amateur rumbles. Whitaker was one of the greatest amateurs in history, winning the mythical "Triple Crown" of the Pan-American Games, the World Championships and the Olympics.
During that time, he resisted the impulse to turn pro before he was ready.
"I was biding my time," he said. "I didn't want to be greedy. I knew my time would come."
Now is his time. At the least, it is the fight of Whitaker's life and probably Chavez's, too. Some say that this match will define the careers of these men, that Chavez and Whitaker will be to each other what Roberto Duran was to Leonard, what Joe Frazier was to Ali, what Gene Tunney was to Jack Dempsey.
Whitaker doesn't see it that way. To him, it's just another fight.
"I take all my fights the same," he said. "You can't afford to lose and you can't afford to look bad."
\ Gone to the beach
Whitaker will have trained close to six months for this fracas in Texas. Some of the old-time prizefighters might not even recognize Whitaker's regimen for what it is.
They may have wondered: This is boxing?
"Things have gone well here," Whitaker said. "We try to keep things mixed up. Break up the monotony, have some fun."
Fun? A fight camp? Old-timers used to head for remote locations, far-removed from women, booze, high-stakes card games and rich food. For months at a time, a slugger preparing for a title brawl would run, work the heavy bag, spar, jump rope and run some more.
Whitaker and his entourage of manager Lou Duva, trainers George Benton, Ronnie Shields and Roger Bloodworth and sparring partners Eric "Rock Man" Holland, Sal Lopez and Nick Rupa move into the luxury Atrium resort hotel, just off the waterfront in Virginia Beach.
Whitaker, his wife, Rovonda, and their three boys live in a large house they built in Virginia Beach. But when business calls, Whitaker checks into a hotel.
"I like to get away from the distractions at home so I can concentrate on what I have to do," he said. "With three boys, something is always going on there."
Bob Wareing, a third-generation member of the family that runs the gym where Whitaker works out, is Whitaker's physical trainer and probably his closest confidant. Like Whitaker, he lives in Virginia Beach and has a wife and three children. And he too checks into the Atrium when it's time to go to war.
"In camp, whenever you see Pete you're going to see me," said Shields, a 35-year-old former North American Boxing Federation junior welterweight champion out of Houston. "But Pete is probably closer to Bob than he is to me. Both of us know Pete like the back of our hand."
Wareing works with Whitaker year-round. Wareing, who once played junior college football for Hank Norton at Ferrum, is 42 and looks 10 years younger, probably because he goes through much the same routine and diet his guy does.
"Pete's in great shape," Wareing said. "He stays in great shape - the complete pro. He gets his briefcase and goes to work, just like everybody else."
Wareing has it all figured out, from weights, to aerobics, to brutal interval work that Whitaker does with Wareing's swifter-of-foot brother, Mike. When Mike and Pete - who is capable of covering 40 yards in 4.7 seconds - head off for intervals, that means down to the boardwalk for 30 seconds of sprinting, 15 seconds of rest, 45 seconds of sprinting, 20 seconds of rest, and on and on for four miles or more.
"This one is going to hurt," Bob Wareing said before one recent session.
They've hurt together, those two. When for all those years Whitaker dieted like an anorexic to make the unnatural - for him - cutoff at 135 pounds so he could fight as a lightweight, Wareing was right there with him.
"It used to be unbelievable," Wareing said. "Go all day on a grapefruit? Working out like he does? Terrible."
On Team Pete, each has his own responsibility. Duva and Benton plot strategy, watching hours upon hours of tape, looking for flaws that Whitaker can exploit. Whitaker hates watching fights on tape. He doesn't like boxing at all, really, unless he's participating or one of his pals like Mark Breland, a teammate on the 1984 Olympic team of which Whitaker was the captain, is involved. Basketball is his true love and he's quite good at it.
"Fighters don't beat fighters, a style beats a fighter," Duva said. "That's what we prepare him for, the style that he can expect from Chavez."
\ Night on the town
Nobody adapts better than Pete.
"He's the complete fighter," said Benton, the lead trainer. "All of my fighters are versatile. You have to teach them how to think. Pete can do that. He's smart."
And the complete man about town, even in training. Whitaker used to be known as a man who toured all the clubs, partying by night, snoozing by day. These days, it is said, he has matured into more of a family man for Rovonda and the boys.
Some things, however, never change.
"When Pete's in training, he's dedicated to what he's doing," Shields said. "He works hard. But when the fight's over, he doesn't even want to talk about the gym.
"He wants to talk about Budweiser."
Benton is amused that the fight game is so smooth and easy these days, particularly compared to the way it used to be.
"They used to keep fighters locked up out in the country somewhere," he said. "They'd work them to death. Then there'd be no women, no fun, no nothin'.
"Fighters would get mean when you did them that way for months at a time. Every trainer used to carry a pistol in his pocket in case a fighter went crazy on him. I saw a trainer almost shoot somebody else's fighter one time, and he would have done it if the pistol hadn't got hung up in his pocket."
Nobody is armed one summer night in Virginia Beach when a dinner party is convened by Duva to set forth for Italian food. The party includes Shields; Kevin Lueshing, a promising British welterweight who is working out with Shields; Wareing; Holland; a couple of writers; and Whitaker.
Such a crowd looks slightly out of place in a joint whose dominant decorative feature is the pastel shades of pink that tie everything together.
The food orders vary. Whitaker has pasta and washes it down with Italian bottled water. When the food arrives, the tough guys make short work of it. About five minutes. Whitaker lingers no more than a minute longer, looks around the circular table, and says, "Gotta go."
In an instant, the sparring partners and trainers get up to go with him, leaving the writers and Duva to finish their meals.
"Pete don't know how to take his time," Duva said.
Whitaker will go on to his usual nightly routine with the guys. Perhaps a game of dominoes in the hotel suite or a couple of racks of pool at a nearby saloon. Usually, they take a long stroll on the boardwalk.
Only recently, Whitaker and pals have taken to walking on the beach itself.
"He's found that the view is better down there," Wareing said.
"Pete says there ain't no water in the projects," Wareing said. "I've gotten him on my boat a couple of times, but I've had to get him damned drunk to do it."
\ High profile
Young Park projects, where Whitaker grew up, has been renamed Young Terrace. The name is about all that's fresh about the joint.
Young Terrace runs along busy Brambleton Avenue in Norfolk, almost in the shadow of the Scope, the circular arena where Whitaker has fought professionally on several occasions.
The projects are a series of long buildings set up in an architecturally-orderly complex that goes back from the street a block. A lot of projects like these were built around Virginia in the early 1950s. If you've ever visited Roanoke's Lincoln Terrace or Lansdowne, you've got a good picture of Young Terrace.
Here and there, somebody has bravely installed a flower garden that flutters in the salty breeze coming off the Elizabeth River beyond the downtown skyline. Otherwise, there is not a lot of beauty or order in these sad dwellings owned by the taxpayers.
Whitaker returns here infrequently, and then for reasons other than nostalgia.
"It's what I keep trying to tell you guys," he said. "The place ain't safe."
From such difficult beginnings came the man who is arguably the most renowned of all Virginia-born athletes.
There are plenty of sports fans in places such as Bangkok or Nairobi who have never heard of football's Bruce Smith - a childhood friend of Whitaker - much less golf's Curtis Strange or baseball's Lou Whitaker (no relation to Pete). But they've heard of Pernell Whitaker.
"You may not have a feel for that until you go somewhere like the press conference we had recently in California," Wareing said. "You wouldn't believe all the reporters from places like Thailand and Malaysia there. This fight with Chavez is going to be absolutely huge globally."
Whitaker is plenty famous around town, too. When he and the guys go out running on the boardwalk, people constantly recognize him and cheer him on from a respectful distance.
The hard-hearted fighter is a notable softy when it comes to children, the ill and the weak. He spends many hours visiting hospitals and lending his name to civic projects.
"You don't do it out of pity for anybody," he said. "You do it for the great feeling it gives you. I want to help my state and my city. I'm here. If they need me, they know where to find me."
Such sentiments suggest the sort of enterprises Whitaker may undertake once his beating and banging days are through.
"I think he'll go into politics," Wareing said.
\ What's in a name?
Ask anybody who's close to Whitaker something about "Sweetpea" and they're likely to think you want a plot summary of a recent "Popeye" episode.
Not a soul who knows him personally calls him "Sweetpea." Not one.
Pernell always has been "Pete" to his family and friends. Back in his amateur days, when he was a roughnecked and talented teen-ager, his nom de guerre was "Sweet Pete." Had it on his shoes and everything.
As luck would have it, some newspaper guy got it wrong, probably while taking information about a fight on the phone on deadline one night. The name that went in the paper the next morning was Pernell "Sweetpea" Whitaker.
It's the kind of newspaper error that drives people crazy. Not Pete Whitaker.
"I don't have any problem with that," he said. "That name's been good to me."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB