Blue and red. Two Cubans in the ring. A dancer and a giant chasing flies with boxing gloves. The elusive Loren Berto Alfonso, the king of the feint, waits with his hands lowered in a strenuous imitation of Muhammad Ali, always at the right distance; Emmanuel Reyes, The profit, who has known him all his life, advances head on, left hand up, right hand ready to reply. He connects with a few blows, but most of the time the feline slips away, despite his 92 kilos, Alfonso, who wants to be more of an eel than a fly, and puts a glove to his head when he thinks he has gotten away with an attack to say to the referees, did you see how good it is?
Two rounds like this. It’s enough to make you desperate. “Loren Berto wanted to make him desperate and he did,” says Rafael Lozano, the Spanish coach, who also gets desperate in his chair under the ring, and raises his left and doubles with his right, in a mime that he wants to reach his boxer, who in the third round, already desperate, since the referees awarded the first two to his rival (3-2, 4-1), throws himself with everything, blind fury, and hits the air. It’s a matinee at the Paris Trade Fair. It is the fight for the right to fight in a ring installed on the central court of Roland Garros the grand final that will close the boxing evenings. The defeated has the consolation that even if he does not fight the final, he will receive a bronze medal on the same court from Philippe Chatrier, and only that perspective calms down after the fight with a defeat (4-1) to the Prophet, 31 years old, who came from Cuba to Galicia looking for a living. “I am grateful to God for the result, for the Olympic bronze medal. It is not the one I wanted, which was gold, but, well, it is a medal and a grain of sand for the Spanish delegation. I am super happy with that because I was able to give that grain of sand,” says the Prophet after the fight, and finds in the bronze a consolation to the inner frustration of all those who believe themselves unjustly defeated, which they do not want to reveal, perhaps remembering how different their unjust defeat in the quarterfinals of Tokyo 2020 against another Cuban, Julio César la Cruz, was. The shadow. “After all I have gone through to get here, this bronze medal is huge, both for me and for my family, for my nine-year-old son. All the work I did to get to Spain and be able to represent it, this is the good result. I am grateful to Spain for giving me the opportunity.”
No one expects such a calm reaction from a boxer who loves showmanship and conscious bravado. That is the folklore of boxing, and he has patented phrases like “I’m going to tear heads off,” “we’re going to set fire to the Eiffel Tower” or “we’re going to raise Napoleon from his grave.” And even when he analyzes the fight, he prefers to respond with a sarcastic smile rather than fury. “When you have to come out on the back in the third round, it’s always more difficult,” he explains. “I went out to get him, but the referees didn’t see anything, they didn’t see that part of me, that I landed more punches, and they only saw him, who danced more and raised his hand without landing the punches. They didn’t see my punches, they saw his that were never there, they were ghosts, but, well, that’s how it is.”
Both, the winner and the loser, are from Havana. Although they are only three years apart, Reyes is 31, they did not coincide in Havana on the national team. “He was in the provinces, but I was on the national team. Of course we get along well, but this is war,” says the Prophet. “I will always be Cuban but I defend the Spanish flag.” The search for survival, their fists, took one of them to Azerbaijan and the other to A Coruña. “I grew up in a poor family. I need to support it. The salary here, in Azerbaijan, is normal, it is enough for me. I send money to my mother and my daughter in Cuba,” says Loren Berto, who will fight for the gold on Friday at 10:34 p.m., in phrases that could be repeated by the Prophet, who lives in Spain with his father, but his mother is still in Cuba. “It was for the good of my family that I agreed to be away from her. It is hard not to see my daughter, but I have to do it.”
All these speeches do not calm, however, the despair of Balita, coach and technical director of Spanish Olympic boxing, and also the last Olympic medalist, 48 kilos, and twice, bronze in Atlanta 96 and silver in Sydney 2000 after losing the final to the Frenchman Brahim Asloum. “It is a frustrating bronze,” he says. And his analysis is forceful. “My boxer did not lose the first round. He landed the clearest blows, he controlled the rhythm of the fight. Loren Berto did practically nothing. In the second round, he also hit him with blows and they scored 4-1. And in the third round, well, normal, if he attacks desperately then obviously you get a few more blows but he didn’t lose either. I don’t understand the scoring system they are using here. “Honestly, I don’t think he lost the fight,” says the former boxer from Cordoba, who as a child was a street vendor in his Cerro Muriano, and went to the swearing-in ceremony for recruits with a stand of Coca-Colas and beers. “We knew Loren Berto well. In Italy we hit him from all sides, just like now. If he hasn’t done anything to win, always lowering his hands, not throwing punches… I think the judges are right. [un norteamericano, un argentino, un iraní, un noruego y un irlandés; el árbitro, indonesio]
They are tired of watching a lot of fights and they can’t see well. I hope they will recover their sight on Wednesday, in the semi-final of the heavyweights of our Ayoub Ghadfa, although I don’t know, the opponent is Djamili-Dini Aboudou, a Frenchman…”
At 3:33 p.m., the fairground pavilion, neutral during the last morning’s combat, regains the tricolor patriotic fervour. La Marseillaise is sung again and all the bluesFrance returns to the ring.
You can follow Morning Express Sports on Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive the Daily newsletter of the Paris Olympic Games.