Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 209

Pernell Whitaker has won an Olympic gold medal and five world titles. He's proud of these accomplishments but even prouder of how he achieved them: fight, the press conference a month before. But -when the fight is two days away, you can look in a fighter's eyes a wall can come down his face. He's scared to death, and it's too late. 'He sold his soul to the we say.

If you're not mentally prepared, you're beat." In 1988, he fought Jose Luis Ramirez in Paris for the WBC lightweight tide. The judges declared Ramirez the winner, yet one of the judges was quoted as telling Whitaker afterward, "There is no doubt in my mind you won." The fans and the press apparently agreed. "After that decision in Paris," Whitaker said, "I knew the judging system is corrupt sometimes. I'd never put my career in the judges' hands. If I' out there entertaining, the people are going to decide who wins." And in a rematch with Ramirez in 1989, Whitaker scored a sweet victory.

Then, last September, Whitaker defended his WBC welterweight title against Mexico's legendary Julio Cesar Chavez, then undefeated in the ring. Once again continued come him in a show of pride. It was the first time one of their own had won an Olympic gold medal. "Fighters today forget where they came from," said Lou Duva, who along with Shelly Finkel manages Whitaker. "But Pernell never has." "I never will," Whitaker said.

"My roots are in Young Park. I came from the projects, where people ought to be able to feel that if I can succeed, they can too, in another field. But you've got to love it and want to do it. I don't like boxing. I love it I would box for nothing." Whitaker recalled earning $65,000 for his first professional fight and feeling like he was a millionaire.

Today, he can command several million dollars for a bout, but he said he never goes to training camp thinking about the money: "I go in looking to see how I'm gonna win this fight. Anyone can win it's the way you win." How much of boxing is psyching-out an opponent? "Ninety percent," he asserted. "That's the hype in the MOM CAN WIN- IT'S Ti POPE JOAN, PURGATORY AND ALL THAT! Free! A mini-dictionary of Catholic terms medal, everything else is icing on the cake." "Everything else" includes 33 wins, one loss and one draw, with 15 knockouts and total earnings of about $15 million. Three weeks frorrihow, Whitaker will defend his welterweight title against Buddy McGirt in an arena called Norfolk Scope literally next door to the projects in Norfolk, where he grew up. The last time they met, in 1993, Whitaker came away with the title.

Kathy Duva, publicist for Main EventsMonitor, which promotes his fights, maintains that Whitaker at 5 feet 6 and 147 pounds is pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world. She said he's ready to settle a grudge with McGirt, who contended that the loss was due in part to a prior injury. Whitaker took McGirt's comments as an insult. The fight will be televised on HBO. Whitaker, now 30, was introduced to boxing when he was just 9, after getting into a fight with another boy in front of a neighborhood recreation center.

"The boxing coach came outside, grabbed us, put gloves on us, and we duked it out," he recalled. "Then he told us to go home and get permission from our parents to be boxers." Pernell's father said no, because he didn't want to see anyone hitting his son. "So," Whitaker said, "I just went one step over his head to my mother and she said yes. But after losing my first three fights, I did what any other kid would do: I quit," So how did a child who grew up in the projects and quit boxing at age 9 end up becoming a world champion who earned $3 million for one fight last year? Whitaker credits his mom for being his backbone. "My mother sat me down one day and told me I would win," he said.

"That's all I needed. I came back when I was 11 and won 25 fights in a row. After that, I knew I was destined to be a boxer." His father also was a source of encouragement. "I always looked up to him," he said. "I used to watch him play softball and see how good he was.

I wanted to be like him, compete like he did and be known. My father retired as a city worker. He raised seven kids in the projects. He disciplined us. None of us has been in jail or on drugs.

We're all very respectable. That's why I always say parents should be role models, instead of kids looking at athletes." When he was 12 years old, Whitaker recalled, he watched Sugar Ray Leonard and Leon Spinks win gold medals at the '76 Olympics. "I went to my mother and said, 'I'm going to win a gold medal for And she didn't say, 'Are you crazy? You're She said, I know you'll do Eight years later, Whitaker was close to making the '84 Olympic team when for the second time in his life he wanted to quit. He was crushed after being judged the loser in a qualifying-round fight that everybody except the judges thought he had won. "I was so upset," he said.

"I figured I gave it everything I had. I didn't feel like I could do it again." But the next night, at his mother's urging, Whitaker went back out and won. He made the Olympic team and went on to win the gold in the lightweight division. If it hadn't been for his mother, he said, he wouldn't be where he is today. After the Olympics, it was a triumphant Pernell Whitaker who returned home to the Young Park projects.

He said 30,000 people were waiting to wel- YOU WW if ipis i Are you ever stopped by words you understand vaguely, or not at all? What about words like Purgatory, exorcism, limbo, excommunication? Or charisms, Satanism, gnosticism? Have you ever wondered exactly what the Catholic Church teaches on questions like evolution, life in outer space, salvation outside the Church? Or its views on organic transplants, cremation? Are you ever curious about the history of movements like the Jehovah's Witnesses, or the truth of stories like the one about Pope Joan, or the real meaning of indulgences for Catholics? We have a mini-dictionary that provides concise, authoritative answers to these and hundreds of other questions on Catholic terms, history and doctrine. We'll be glad to send you a free copy. Just mail the coupon at left. No one will call. FREE Mail Coupon Today! IN THE LAST 10 YEARS, PERNELL "Sweetpea" Whitaker has won five world-champion boxing titles in three different weight classes.

But titles come and go, he said. There is only one thing nobody can ever take away from him the gold medal he won at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. As we sat in the sunroom of his Virginia Beach home, he told me he will never forget that night: "They placed that medal around my neck and played the national anthem. Nothing else I do in life will top that feeling. I came out of the ring and put that medal on my mother.

After winning the gold PR-71 Please send Free Mini-dictionary entitled Vatholic Word Book" This otbris IMIad to on ImpatvphleL Name. Address City BY CLAIRE CARTER CATHOLIC INFORMATION SERVICE KIUGHTS of COLUIZ1DUS P.O. Box 1971, New Haven, CT 06521 PARADE MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 11, 1994 PAGE 21 PAGE 20 SEPTEMBER It, 1994 PARADE MAGAZINE.