~ The Yuriorkis Gamboa Bandwagon ~

The summer is quite busy for Gamboa

-He recently signed with Top Rank and gonna have his debut on the Latin Fury card on the 25th

-Bob Arum's ultimate plan most likely for the Puerto Rican Day Parade weekend 2010 is to match Yuri with SBW champion Juan Manuel Lopez. First step is a Juanma/Gamboa double-header in September

-WBA elevated Chris John to 'Super Champion' status, that means interim champ Gamboa is now 'Full WBA FW Champ' if that means anything

-Yuriorkis Gamboa... the PROMOTER? :smoke Yes, it's true, read the official statement:



YURIORKIS GAMBOA’S CICLON PROMOTIONS SIGNS CUBAN AMATEUR STARS!

Ciclon Promotions was created by former Cuban 2004 Olympic Champion and current WBA Interim Featherweight Champion Yuriorkis “El Ciclon”Gamboa (15-0, 13 KO’s) and Miami local boxing promoter Henry Rivalta.

Gamboa which dreamed about being a promoter since arriving in the U.S. in 2007, this afternoon at the Deauville Beach Resort in Miami Beach (Ciclon Promotions) announced the signing of the latest former Cuban amateur boxing stars breaking into the pro ranks. They are Heavyweight Humberto Savigne, Light Heavyweight Sullivan Barrera and Yuriorkis’s younger brother Jr. Lightweight Yoelvis Gamboa.

Humberto Savigne started boxing in the Cuban system at the age of 11 and has 491 amateur bouts under his belt. He had fought as an amateur for the Cuban boxing team worldwide at 178Lbs. Light Heavyweight Sullivan Barrera which is also a Cuban Amateur veteran with 413 amateur bouts had fought for the Cuban team in the Central American and Caribbean games, and the Pan Am Games. The youngest of the trio Yuriorkis’s 22 year old younger brother Yoelvis Gamboa will be fighting as a Jr. Lightweight, had 79 amateur bouts all inside Cuba.

All three boxers are happy to be here in the states fulfilling there lifelong dream of being professional world champs, and are glad to be the first to sign with Ciclon Promotions.

 

Wow, you guys gotta read this, nice find Ricky369!


Unbeaten Cuban boxer Gamboa fighting for himself, family and freedom

BY DAN LE BATARD

Salsa crackles over the speakers, fighting to be heard above all the punches. Speed bags. Heavy bags. This is the music to which Yuriorkis Gamboa has always danced, the soundtrack to his life since the Cuban government started programming him to be a fighter. It makes sense that this tiny champion with fire*******s in his fists would train now on Calle Ocho, the street where Miami and Cuba most famously intersect. He represents one of the few things the rotting island he fled is still fertile enough to export to our country -- hunger.

Gamboa is The Next Big Little Thing in boxing. Fifteen fights. All victories. Thirteen knockouts. Nine within two rounds. He is the interim World Boxing Association featherweight champion, and the buzz is building. Four of his fights have been on ESPN, two on HBO, one on Showtime. His boxing journey began with daily training from 4 to 7 p.m. That's when he was 6. Then he left his family entirely to train 25 days out of every month. That's when he was 9.

But such is the plight of the Cuban athlete: The Olympic gold medal Gamboa won in 2004? He had to sell it for cash to help his family. On international trips, he wouldn't use the hotel soap. He would hide a bar a day and horde the replacements so that he could bring it all back home. Thirteen people lived in his house in Cuba -- abuela, parents, cousins -- and they didn't own a car between them. Gamboa brought Cuba glory with his fists and fame, but he didn't realize just how little his country was giving him back until talking to boxers from other countries.

''One told me he got three cars, two houses, cash and gold,'' Gamboa says in Spanish. ``There were guys I was killing. They were losing to me, and I couldn't afford their sandals.''

He decided to defect when he was denied per diem one day while training in Venezuela. Ten dollars. That's what cost Cuba its champion. Gamboa used to buy trinkets in other countries with that per diem that he would bring back home and resell as part of his hustle. Can you image that here? An Olympic champion hawking souvenirs on a street corner while in his prime? Denied his 10 dollars one day in 2006, he got into a cab at 5 a.m., and left behind everything and everyone he loved without knowing if and when he would see any of them again.

''All he ever got for being champion was a telephone,'' his father says.

A cellphone?

``No, a telephone for our house.''

His father is here now. That's one of the things Gamboa is doing with his money, bringing over the love he left. Ten thousand dollars at a time, he has paid to have seven family members and friends whisked off the island by boat. He began doing it when he would win a fight on TV, get picked up on shoulders and still feel ''empty and sad,'' in his words, ``because the people around me celebrating weren't the people who should have been around me celebrating.''


SHARING WITH DAD

Gamboa's father remains lost in this country as his life here is little more than home-gym-home (''I'm learning to walk,'' the old man says before correcting himself. ''Crawl. Crawl and hope to walk.'') But the father came because his son said he needed him. There wasn't more of an explanation required than that.

''To share,'' the son says.

The boxer sobbed when his 2-year-old daughter arrived. He was supposed to hide in the car to surprise her, but couldn't help himself. He burst out and came running the moment he saw the back of his little girl from afar. ''Papito!'' she yelled upon seeing him. When trying to articulate how that felt, starting his new life in this country with his daughter finally in his arms, this bone-tough fighter wipes a finger at a tear forming in the corner of his eye, turns his face away and uses one of the few English words he knows.

''Wow,'' he says.

He has fought 15 times in less than two years, a ridiculous amount for a fighter of his pedigree, because there is so much catching up to do. Being an undefeated conqueror is just a starting point, not a finish line. Gamboa, 27, has started Ciclone Promotions with local promoter Henry Rivalta and plans to build an empire. Coffee, cigars, champions -- that's what Cuba exports. So Cuban champions Sullivan Barrera and Humberto Savigne defected and are already on the team here, and Gamboa promises more are on the way now that the path to freedom has been blazed.

''We were prisoners in Cuba,'' he says. ``Tourists had access to things we didn't have. I didn't think I'd ever see my family and friends again. Now we can do this together here.''

The heavy afternoon air is musty with the scent of sweat absorbed by every pore of Rivalta's Top Level gym.

The grunts coming from under all that dreadlocked hair over there belong to giant Shannon Briggs, former heavyweight champ. Barrera is off in a corner, trying to find his way. He has only been here a couple of months, and he can't stop thinking about the 3-year-old daughter he left behind.

''She keeps asking me when I'm coming back,'' he says. ``She keeps telling people to take her to her father -- that I'm the only one who knows how to bathe her and make her dinner.''

He calls and tells her that he is buying her dolls, but she is biting her nails and crying too much and has been to four psychiatrists.

''It is trauma,'' he says.

As he crossed a bridge in Mexico to defect, Barrera immediately called Gamboa and began weeping. It was not joy as he sprinted toward his future.

''I already miss my daughter,'' he wailed.

They fought for their country once; now they fight for their families and for themselves.


A LONELY PURSUIT

It is a lonely pursuit in a lonely sport -- boring repetition hitting a bag and jumping rope and those 10-mile runs to simply start the training day. Rare is the sane man who chooses to make his living this way, stepping into a ring stripped down to nothing but his courage.

Gamboa has won already, no matter what happens from here; Barrera is just starting the kind of long fight so many people in Miami know too well. He need only look at his lifelong friend across the gym to know what is possible.

But on this weekend when America celebrates its independence, both men give the same answer when asked what awed them most upon arrival in in the country.

''Freedom,'' they say.

 

Unfortunately Yuri's first title defense is off due to VISA problems.

He was scheduled to fight Whyber Garcia on Top Rank's July 25 Latin Fury card in Mexico, but couldn't get the proper papers in time (how exactly could this happen?). They are going to reschedule it, but looking at TR's schedule, it's hard to find a good card around the end of July. Best thing would be putting it on the Donaire/Luevano/Solis undercard, but these are the televised ones and IMO it's unlikely Arum will put another possible 12 rounder on TV.

DAMN!!! :twisted: :-(