A Heavy Weight
Before he was convicted of rape and hauled off to prison in 1983, Tony Ayala was one of pro boxing's most prominent stars.
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Raditz discharged Tony as a patient in 1986, and the same year the psychologist left the prison system to concentrate on his private practice. But he continued to talk to Tony almost daily. Tony was transferred to Rahway State Prison—still a maximum-security unit, only with more activities for the inmates—and there he helped found a system-approved peer-counseling program. Tony stayed in shape by lifting weights. He had found that if he tried to relieve his stress by working out in the meager boxing gym, it was like an old western: Somebody was always out to prove something by taking him on, and if it went badly for the challenger, in prison that could be reason enough to kill. "I'd done it for big money in Atlantic City and Vegas," he says. "Boxing in prison was pouring salt in a wound." Raditz, meanwhile, started spending more time with his old acquaintance Don Elbaum, a crusty boxing promoter in Philadelphia, and eventually he came to manage the career of a world lightweight contender, Tracy Spann.
Lisa never stopped asking Raditz about Tony, and finally, one day, she listened to her heart and called him. They got back together again, but now her role was not as passive. She and Tony's lawyers were constantly looking for a way to get him out, but it was tough—even with comparatively good press. When Mike Tyson was awaiting his indictment on rape charges in 1991, the New York Times rediscovered Tony. In the photo that ran with the piece, Tony sat on the back of a chair, eyes and mouth conveying a mix of stoic humor and self-beratement. Although his comments were thoughtful and articulate, in many ways he did seem like the first coming of Iron Mike. Yet while Tyson served just three years, confessed to nothing, expressed no remorse, scorned the victim, and was soon back out fighting stiffs for millions, Tony was doing hard time—and lots of it.
I talked to Tony by phone in 1996, when a lawyer was trying to win his release (then from Bayside) with a plea for executive clemency. From Republican crimestopper Christine Todd Whitman? For rape with a deadly weapon? Fat chance, I thought, and in the tired flatness of Tony's voice, I could tell he knew it too. "I went into Trenton with the conviction I was going to die in prison," he told me. "I was going to kill somebody or get killed. I would not submit. And I had some close calls. I about got stabbed. I was getting into drugs again. But that night I heard that voice—my inner voice—in my cell. And then I met Brian Raditz. So in a sense, prison saved my life. It gave me the chance to make a new start. And if I were to die tonight, I'd die a better person than I was when I came here."
At the time we spoke he and Lisa had broken up again. She was living in Euless then, and she agreed to meet me at a restaurant. It was chilly that night, and her dark hair was clipped behind a thick white turtleneck. She had an abrupt kind of poise. Her voice seemed to slice out of the right side of her mouth—I realized later that her accent resulted from those many years living in Philadelphia. She was now working for a pharmaceutical company. She told me she went to church and had a group of friends there. She was dating again. Yet she told me that it wasn't over with Tony. "Evidently," she said with a laugh, "I am supposed to be with this man."
She said her friends in Dallas and Fort Worth had no inkling of her life with him. I was flabbergasted. "What are they going to say when he gets out and it's in the news?" I asked.
She laughed again. "They'll say, 'You've thrown away your youth! For this monster!'"
Tony's comeback was supposed to commence when the parole board rewarded him for being a model prisoner and granted him parole in 1998. "People were down there talking about multimillion-dollar fights," says Elbaum, shaking his head. "I thought, 'Man, that's gonna backfire,' and it did." Parole was denied. It always seemed that part of the punishment was to ensure that he would be too old to fight again. But at that point, what was one more year to Tony? If he just stayed out of trouble, the authorities had to let him go.
When the date of his release finally arrived, he walked to a limo Raditz had rented. "Hey, Tony, we finally got you out," quipped his lawyer. "During the ride he was quiet and just really watching," Lisa says. "Taking everything in. When we got close to Philadelphia, he said to me, 'So this is the way you came,'" referring to her long drives all those weeks to see him.
Within a day or two, Tony was working out in a gym. Raditz arranged a poolside press event at his home. "It was all lovey-dovey," says John Whisler, an Express-News boxing writer who had contended that Raditz was an "opportunist," and that his role as past shrink and present manager automatically presented a perception of a conflict of interest. In attendance were some ex-cons who had preceded Tony in their freedom and were extremely loyal to their friend and counselor. Throat noises were heard; steps were taken. For a moment it looked like the reporter was going for an early-spring swim.
While Tony was doing his time, Tony Senior had come into possession of a boxing gym fashioned from the shell of an old grocery store on Zarzamora Street. Raditz invested money in the gym and became the Ayalas' partner; the old man would train Tony, Raditz would be Tony's manager, and Elbaum would serve as an outside adviser. They were going to do it just like George Foreman had done in his second career: fight every four to six weeks and build up at an even pace. The light at the end of their long tunnel was De La Hoya, the matinee idol of Chicano boxing. Other desired opponents were Puerto Rican Felix Trinidad, African Ike Quartey, and maybe the light heavyweight champion, Roy Jones—three of the best fighters on the planet. If the idea sounded preposterous, well, so had Foreman's.
But the light flickered. Three weeks after his press conference, in stifling heat, the elder Ayala had his boy sparring five-minute rounds against James "Cowboy" Coker, a southpaw with a 19-1 record who knocked down Olympic gold medalist David Reid three times en route to losing a decision in 1998. Against this skilled sparring partner, Tony's punches were tentative. He started to throw them but pulled up because the opening he had seen was gone. Tony couldn't get off, in the jargon of the trade, while Coker jolted him almost at will with his jab and straight left. The next day, in walked Roland Rangel in construction clothes, front teeth knocked out, ugly as a train yard. He changed into his shoes and trunks, pulled on tattered headgear, climbed in the ring, touched Tony's glove, and then began to blast him too. At one point Tony whipped his head around and staggered. On the apron his dad raised a hand at Roland to hold off. Tony's wisdom teeth had flared up, subjecting him to oral surgery two weeks out from the fight, and Roland's punch had just sent a bolt of white heat through his head.
After the workout the patriarch took a seat and stretched his arms across the backs of metal chairs. Wearing shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, he looked his age, 65. "My son came out of his incarceration weighing 196 pounds," he said calmly. "He weighed 162 ten minutes ago. He's not quite there. It's going to take him five or six fights. His hand speed's fair—he's never been a wizard at that—but he's a good defensive fighter. Good puncher. Takes a hell of a shot. It's all there."
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