![]() Then there were the numerous times sparring with a prime Roberto Duran, not least before the first Leonard fight: “He liked me because I wasn’t scared of him. When he arrived in the Big Apple he was amazed by “the tall buildings and the pizza,” so much so that he ate pizza every day until he couldn’t take it anymore.Ī shy man, once he opens up he’s full of interesting stories: from the fun he had working with the incredible Saoul Mamby prior to his win over Esteban De Jesus for the WBC belt, to his foreign jaunts in Italy sparring Vito Antuofermo before his title-winning bout against Hugo Corro, and in France in 1990 doing the same job with Christophe Tiozzo ahead of his fight with In-Chul Baek. He remembers how much he cried he didn’t want to leave his stepfather and home in Puerto Rico. Luis Resto lives in the Bronx, as he has done – apart from a two-and-a-half-year stint in prison – since he came to New York as an 11-year-old to join his mother, sisters and brother. Court cases or no, the family’s loss remains. Court cases, vain attempts on the part of those nursing their loss at some kind of compensation, have cropped up periodically, had some publicity in the press, dragged on and then been dismissed. Meanwhile, down in Antioch, Tennessee, the Collins family still bristle with grief and anger. He admits, “It was a very big part of my life.” Randy Gordon was covering boxing at the time and later became chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission and has written about it sporadically up until the present day. They introduced the referee for the night as Billy Collins Snr and the guy next to me says, ‘Do you know anything about him?’, and he told me this whole story and I never forgot it.” They sent me to cover a local fight at the National Coliseum or wherever it was. He remembers: “I wrote for a newspaper in Nashville, my first job out of college. Jeff Pearlman wrote a fine article about the fight and its aftermath for Sports Illustrated. She says, “I got so involved with the story, I felt like it was my reason for being. Susan Sacks, who came across the story in the sports supplement of a newspaper, went down to meet the Collins family and wrote a screenplay about it in 1990. Others came across the sad history later, wrote about it, made their own contribution to passing it on and then found that something of it remained inside them. Those who were there or came into contact at some point with the protagonists have been profoundly affected, unable to forget what happened. Periodically articles get written and the events of June 16, 1983, find their way back onto the pages. THE Billy Collins– Luis Resto fight is one of those stories that keep on coming back.
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