Friday, August 5, 2016 at 1:00 PM – KHSU Homepage Segment: Teofilo Stevenson
Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on great athletes and sport from the Americas and Caribbean and their connection to popular culture and politics.
Three-time Olympic gold-medalist Teofilo Stevenson
Today we’ll be looking at one of the greatest athletes in the history of the modern Olympics, and Cuba’s national sports hero, Teofilo Stevenson (1952 – 2012). A boxer with size, quickness, ferocity, intelligence and durability, Stevenson won 3 gold medals in three different Olympics. Boxing promoters from the US tried to lure Stevenson with big money to leave Cuba after winning his second gold medal in the 1976 Montreal Olympics to fight heavyweight world champion , Muhammad Ali. Stevenson, whose popularity rivaled Castro in Cuba, turned down the money, declaring his love for his Cuban countrymen and the Castro regime that held him up as the ultimate exemplar of Cuba’s aspirations. No one would ever know the result of what could truly have been the “fight of the century.”
Two great champions who never fought; an aging Muhammad Ali (left) suffering from Parkinson’s Syndrome meeting with Cuban national sports hero, Teofilo Stevenson during Ali’s visit to Cuba in 1996.
