Nicaraguan boxers receive support from the WBC
By Pablo Fletes
Adolfo Méndez was not a World Boxing Champion. He also did not dispute a world title in boxing.
However, Méndez will always be remembered as one of the great figures of Nicaraguan amateur boxing in the eighties, in which professionalism was prohibited by the government at the time.
Méndez was a boxer who gave a great show. He fought with the best Latin American fighters (world champions) of the time, and had defeats against boxers who later became World Champions, especially that famous fight against the American Pernell Whitaker, at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
A defeat against the Cuban Adolfo Horta, a three-time amateur world champion, is also widely recounted, but it cannot be denied that he won more than a hundred fights, being the Central American champion and lesser or national events, battling in the featherweight division and then lightweight.
But all this information has been erased from the memory of Méndez, who, around 60 years of age, has vague memories of his sporting past, due to forceful blows he has received throughout his life, especially a traffic accident that erased some memories.
Méndez now expresses himself with difficulty. But he is still like that boy from La Paz Centro, in León, who at the age of 13 took his first steps in amateur boxing, being national champion, national team, Central American champion and in so many events in which he participated. He was not a World Champion, but he had enough merit to be part of the Nicaraguan Sports Hall of Fame, in 2007.
For this and many other reasons, this Tuesday Adolfo Méndez was honored along with other old boxers, with a financial aid sent by the World Boxing Council, to also former fighter and trainer Eduardo Torres, ex-boxer Róger Gontol and referee Alberto Méndez.
Bismarck Morales, who is a boxing judge and member of the WBC, was in charge of the delivery, in an event organized with the support of the Bufalo Boxing Promotions company, run by Ruth Rodríguez and her husband, the two-time world champion, Rosendo Alvarez.
The event took place at the La Vera Italia Restaurant in Managua, where the old fighters surely dusted off some of their memories in the hard sport of boxing.
Morales presented the checks to the aforementioned four, acknowledging the support of WBC President Mauricio Sulaimán through a Jose Sulaiman Fund and Nevada Community Foundation that is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Today, Adolfo Méndez is no longer the young boxer from La Paz who was part of the rich history of boxing in the eighties.
However, his legacy continues to be recognized, in a physique that is still slim, with strong arms, but with ashen hair and a host of blows that he has received throughout his life, surely more painful than what he suffered to throughout his sports career.
Article sponsored by HÖRFA
