By Oliver Fennell
โTHAT man hit me so hard with a left hook, it felt like my head and my brain was on fire. I canโt even explain it. It messed up all the vertebrae in my neck, so after he hit me with it, I couldnโt turn my head back round. I been hit hard by some of the best, but I never been hit like that. That was unbelievable. It took me six months before I got my neck back right and my head facing forward.โ
Alfonzo Ratliffโs vivid description of facing a young Mike Tyson 38 years ago goes a long way towards explaining his tactics on the night, which were decried by the commentators who mocked him for โrunningโ.
His counter: โI donโt hang on other peopleโs opinions about me because โ would [i]you[i] have got in the ring with Mike Tyson back then? Or even now?
โYou know what, though? Itโs not me being cocky or anything like that, but if I had two good hands, Mike Tyson wouldnโt have beat me.โ
Thatโs not the typical excuse of a sore loser blaming a defeat on an injury. Ratliff [i]really didnโt[i] have two good hands โ still doesnโt, and never did throughout his entire boxing career. Itโs something nobody noticed while he was wearing boxing gloves, but itโs the first thing I notice when I arrive at his house in suburban Chicago and he extends his right for a handshake: itโs not so much a hand as a claw.
Yes, he can make a fist with it, but at rest the hand is crooked; bone jutting out above the wrist and tendons pulling the fingers into gnarly positions. Ratliff says itโs been like that since he was a teenager, when he intervened in a street fight and got stabbed in the arm for his troubles, causing the nerve damage that gave him what would be a handicap in any circumstances, and a huge one in a fighting sport โ which makes it all the more bizarre that he didnโt even start boxing until after that happened.
โI was always a good street fighter, so when I saw this situation where a guy was killing a guy, I jumped in,โ he says. โI didnโt know them, but this guy was getting stabbed up. I was a little tipsy, too. He stabbed me in the arm and it messed all my nerves up. Thatโs how I got this claw hand. I was like 16 or 17, before I started boxing.โ
โI was into basketball back then. I became world champion in boxing, but I was a better basketball player than I was a fighter. But after I got stabbed and this happened [the damage to his hand], I couldnโt dribble the ball no more.โ
It might not have been the most obvious switch, taking a handicapped hand into a new sport in which the hands are just as important as they are in basketball, but Ratliff already had a love for boxing, so to him the transition came naturally.
โBack then, we had a black and white TV,โ he says. โI used to watch Sugar Ray Robinson, Jake La Motta, Muhammad Ali. Those were my heroes. I said to myself: โOne day, Iโm gonna do the same things they did.โโ
Ratliff may not have hit quite those heights, but he did win a world championship, reigning as WBC and โlinealโ cruiserweight king in 1985, as well as going back and forth to heavyweight, where he battled several of the biggest names of the time in a nine-year career in which he had 34 bouts (25 wins) and weighed anything from 186lbs to 222lbs, against opponents ranging from 177lbs to 239lbs.
Of how this misshapen hand affected his boxing, Ratliff explains: โMy hand hurt in every fight, and hurt worse afterwards. My hand had to be specially wrapped, but even so, the gloves donโt fit; theyโre too small. I was hurting my hand in training, then fighting with a hurt hand. Iโd hit a guy, and this part would be up like that,โ he says, gesturing to the wrist bones and indicating a couple of inches. โIt would take three or four months to go down.
โI wasnโt able to manage my ability as a fighter. Really, I shouldnโt have even been in the ring. Every time I fought, my hand got worse. But I loved boxing, so I was willing to take that pain.
โGetting stabbed was a blessing and a curse. It was a curse to me because I wasnโt as good [at boxing] as I could have been. With two hands, I would have been devastating. With one hand, I did the best that I could. But it was a blessing because I might not have started boxing without it. Boxing saved my life. It gave me something to do; a dream to fulfil. It kept me focused. When youโre not focused, when youโre on the streets out there, especially here in Chicago, you can get into something real quick. And even though I was in a handicapped position, I still became world champion.โ
Another handicap, if it can be seen as such, was a mental one. Perhaps in a subconscious effort to make up for his damaged hand, Ratliff says he was prone to overtraining. โIโm obsessive,โ he says. โIf you ask me to do 10 rounds, Iโll do 200 rounds; Iโll set out to run five miles and Iโll run 60 miles. It does more damage than it helps. I need someone to watch me.
โBack then, we didnโt know about rest days, we thought you should just train as much as you can. I was in a rush, because I knew my career wouldnโt last so long, physically. I was doing damage to myself because I was always overdoing it.โ
He blames this for his first defeat. โTim Witherspoon was my first loss [tko 7 in December 1981]. He was a heavyweight and I was a cruiserweight, but it really made no difference to me. If I was a flyweight, I still would have tried it. Heavy or light-heavy, cruiserweight, it didnโt make no difference. Short, tall, heavy, skinny; I just wanted to fight.
โI got called up for Witherspoon on the [Atlantic City] Boardwalk. I ran up and down that Boardwalk over and over again; I was running the whole ocean, looking out at all this water, then going down to run on the sand. I overdid it; I had nothing left; I was defeated before the bell. I hate to say it, but I left everything in that damn ocean. Sometimes a person can be doing certain things, but they donโt get the truth until certain things happen to them.โ
Ratliff did manage to temper his enthusiasm a little, to learn to not simply train hard but also train smart, in the wake of what happened against Witherspoon, but always ranked his conditioning as one of his best attributes. Still, this calorie-burning work ethic was perhaps counterproductive to his ultimate ambition.
โI wanted the heavyweight championship, but I just couldnโt put on the weight,โ he says. โI never could put no weight on, and I ate like a pig.โ
That didnโt stop him trying several times to gatecrash the heavyweight top tier, though each attempt was met with defeat, with Pinklon Thomas (tko 10, March 1983), Tyson (tko 2, September 1986) and Gary Mason (tko 6, February 1988) also proving too big and too strong.
At cruiserweight, though, Ratliff was, as a 6ft 4ins upright box-fighter with long arms and fast feet, a different proposition. Wins over the likes of Elijah Tillery, Craig Bodzianowski (twice) and Ricky Parkey attest to this, and his signature success came on June 6, 1985, against cruiserweight great Carlos De Leon, who saw the second of his four WBC reigns ended by an inspired Ratliff.
The Chicago man made the most of his height and reach advantages against the favoured De Leon, his long jabs and scything hooks and uppercuts catching the eye as the shorter champion sought to counter with speed and volume. While De Leon was the superior talent and more experienced operator, Ratliffโs desire was palpable, and his endeavour was rewarded with a split decision after an entertaining, back-and-forth bout.
โEverybody had all this confidence in De Leon,โ he says. โIt was all De Leon this, De Leon that. I felt in my heart that if I gave everything to it, stayed focused, I could do it โ and thatโs what I did. I did all the right things a good fighter should do to win a fight: I trained good, ate good, rested good and stayed focused.โ
Inevitably, a hard fight like that came at a cost, with Ratliff as usual left nursing that sore hand, but then having to make an immediate mandatory defence. Noticeably lacking the desire he had shown against De Leon, Ratliff was often outworked by underdog Bernard Benton and surrendered the title via unanimous decision, little more than three months after winning it.
โBenton caught me at the right time, because I defended my title too fast,โ he says. โI donโt make excuses. Mike Tyson beat me because he was Mike Tyson. Nobody else ever done that against me. But [against Benton] I wasnโt healed, but they forced me to fight him. But then I look at it like if youโve got a mandatory fight, you should give him his chance the way someone gave you your chance. It was his turn and I wasnโt going to deny him the same opportunity I had.โ
Ratliffโs next notable outing was that painful night against Tyson, two months before โIronโ Mike won his first โworldโ title, and from there he fought on for another three years, winning and losing in equal measure against a good level of opposition at both cruiser and heavyweight, before finally bowing out in 1989, when a knockout defeat to Lee Roy Murphy ended his hopes of returning to title contention at 33.
โI was just having physical problems catching up with me by then,โ he says. โWhen youโre younger, you can work through it, but as you get older, it gets worse. I just wasnโt supposed to be boxing anyway. If you have any kind of disadvantage going into that ring, you should think twice. But sometimes people love something so much, they have to take a chance. But by then [after fighting Murphy], I was slowing down, so I knew to leave it alone.โ
Like most ex-fighters, Ratliff knew boxing would try to tempt him back โ and it still does, even at 68. โIโve forgotten about it mostly,โ he says. โI worked several jobs [since retiring from boxing]. I was an Amtrak mechanic and I worked on the GSK production line for bottles of medication. Iโve trained some kids; I still do when I run across guys who need help, who want me to show them some different things.
โItโs been a while since Iโve been in the gym, but Iโm thinking about getting back there. At my age, when you sit down too much, itโs not good. But I need to be careful โ Iโm still compulsive. I donโt move a lot, because when I start, I donโt stop. If I go out that door for a run now, you wonโt see me again today.โ
And that compulsion manifests right in front of me, as Ratliff talks about training and then, with apparent seriousness, about fighting again.
โIโm thinking about it right now,โ he says. โA lot of these guys coming up, I could whoop. No, Iโm serious. Theyโre not conditioned at all. What kind of chance would they have against someone with my attitude, my gumption?
โI might not take a punch to the solar plexus, as I havenโt been doing too much ab work, and my knees are gone, but Iโve never had my teeth knocked out, never had a swollen eye. Boxing costs you a lot of brain cells, and the way I fought, the guys I fought, I really should be punch-drunk, so Iโm very, very thankful God sheltered and protected me.
โIโm a lot more experienced and knowledgeable now. The older you get, the smarter you get, but you tell that to these young guys today, they wouldnโt even understand it.
โImagine me in the ring with these young guys? Man, Iโd run right through โem!โ
Ratliff neednโt be reminded that even in his athletic prime of 38 years ago a young guy by the name of Mike Tyson ran right through him.
โEven now I have problems with my neck; it came from that punch,โ he admits.
As fanciful as it may be for him to talk of beating todayโs young contenders, at least it shows Ratliff is now able to do something he couldnโt as a 30-year-old after facing Tyson: He can look forward.