At end, Paz has plenty of fight

MASHANTUCKET PEQUOT RESERVATION -- Boxing warned Vinny Pazienza from the start how it was going to be -- but he didn't listen.

The game hurt him plenty over the years. It broke his nose, his hands, his skin, his heart. He broke his neck outside the ring, but boxing didn't help the healing process. The only thing boxing couldn't break was his spirit, which is how he could ignore it all and keep doing the one true thing he knew, the one thing that seemed to make every other wrong right to him.

"I saw the `Rocky' movie when I was 14 and I bought it hook, line, and sinker," the five-time world champion, 41, recalled on the eve of the last boxing match of his career. "I fought my first fight in Newport and got my ass kicked in front of Willie Pep by some muscle-bound white kid. But I kept fighting. That set the precedent for my life."

That life, a fighter's life, comes to an end tonight when he steps between the ropes at the Foxwoods Resort and Casino around 9:15 to face Tocker Pudwill.

Vinny Paz was not the greatest boxer of his time and he always understood that, just as he understood that to become an icon to so many working-class fight fans would require he pay a high price -- not with money but with pieces of himself.

Fight fans might marvel at the balletic skills of Roy Jones Jr., the controlled precision of Oscar De La Hoya, and the knockout power of George Foreman, but what they admire most is the thing Vinny Paz has in abundance -- heart.

They like fighters who never go down, but they love fighters who get up. They like fighters who can slip and slide to avoid trouble, but they love fighters who survive trouble and fire back through blinking eyes and bloody faces. Pazienza is one of the latter.

"I'm different from a lot of guys," he said. "I'd rather die than lose. This is my last fight, but it won't be any different from the others. I'll leave nothing, nothing behind."

Pazienza's first pro fight came when he was only 20, an easy night in Atlantic City against Alfredo Rivera, whom he stopped in four rounds. He rose through the lightweight ranks. On June 7, 1987, a day he was badly dehydrated and riddled with the flu, he won the 135-pound world title with a gutsy decision over Greg Haugen. Eight months later, he lost that title back to Haugen and never fought at that weight again. Throughout his career, he had a bad habit of lifting weights and hiding chocolate-covered raisins in his pockets. He had an addiction to muscle-head gyms and Dunkin' Donuts. For the rest of his career, he battled the scales as much as his opponents.

Two days before he was to fight Loreto Garza in California for the World Boxing Association light welterweight (140) title, he told a friend by phone, "I'm right on weight. Never felt better." The following day, Pazienza was swathed in a plastic workout suit, running to sweat his way down to 140 because laxatives weren't enough this time.

"Maybe I was a little over, but I never felt better," he joked. He was so drawn and dehydrated from the effort that he had nothing left for the fight. He lost that night and never fought again at 140, moving up two weight classes to win the WBA 154-pound title two fights later by stopping Gilbert Dele back home in Providence Oct. 1, 1991.

"I loved the discipline of being a fighter. I loved the climb. The struggle. The agony," said Pazienza (49-10). "I'll miss that. I'm surprised to hear me say, `I don't want to anymore,' but I've been fighting all my life. Boxing's given me everything but it takes away from you, too."

A real fighter pays a steep price for glory. Pazienza has paid with his blood, his nose, his hands, and his neck, which causes him daily pain since he broke it in a car accident only days after defeating Dele.

He was told he would never fight again. Ignoring that opinion, and working with a metal halo that stabilized his neck (by being attached to his head with screws), Pazienza began to lift weights without his doctor's permission. Eventually, he began to run. Then he hit the speed bag. Then the heavy bag. Finally, he hit Luis Santana, whom he defeated in the same venue where he will face Pudwill (39-5) tonight, 14 1/2 months after he'd been told his career was over.

Some might say that makes him stubborn. Vinny Paz would argue it made him who he is. "When I drive into my garage and look at the poster for this fight, I see, `Come see Vinny Paz's Last Fight.' It's never been my last fight. I had screws in my head and it wasn't my last fight! I wasn't one of the greatest fighters in boxing but I was one of the greatest stories. I lasted.

"This is the only life I know. It's the life I love. I have the word `warrior' tattooed on my body, but that don't make me a warrior. What does is I'll go through all the pain to win. So I just want to be remembered as a warrior who lasted, a guy who fought and never quit."