A Classic Boxing Underdog Has His Day

Witherspoon Puts Up With a Lot Before Putting Up His Dukes

Yul Witherspoon, a heavyweight boxer brought in to face young fighters on the rise, puts up with long journeys and hardships to stay in the sport. (Jonathan Newton - The Washington Post)

He came up from Louisiana, the Cajun prairie in the southwestern part of the state, unused to the shot of winter air that hit him as he stepped out a front door of BWI airport. A big man, he hunched his shoulders as if that would make him warmer.

His name: Yul Witherspoon, a heavyweight boxer. No one recognized him, nor should they have. Although he was not young, his professional career consisted of only one fight and he had been flown in to face a much-touted "up-and-comer" in a four-round preliminary bout the next day in Glen Burnie. If there were odds to have been found on such a match, they would have been maybe 50-1, or more, against Witherspoon. The first thing he did on this late afternoon was wait near the curb at the airport, and an hour passed before a gray van that was to pick him up finally arrived. In boxing, headliners never wait.

Of course there are fewer and fewer boxing headliners. Yet boxing has never run short of boxers despite the enormous odds against their success. Even the most promising talents are unlikely to become champions. As for those expected to serve as their steppingstones, known merely as "opponents," boxing is unfathomably more difficult. The "opponent" has always been a staple of boxing. Enter Yul Witherspoon, into the van at BWI.

He was accompanied by his trainer, Scott Daley, 37, and his 11-year-old son Philip, and another heavyweight, the perfectly Louisiana-named Royphy Soileau, who was also on the card. The group was whisked along roads banked by snow in an area where nothing looked reassuring to them. They were headed to a nearby eye doctor's office so the fighters could be examined. Despite the unfamiliar landscape, Daley, in a sense, knew where they were. "They're not flying us to Maryland to beat up their guy," he said. "They're flying us here to be the 'opponent.' But then they didn't bring Yul to Houston to beat [Roberto] Flores, but he did. Flores even had his own mariachi band. I knew we were coming as sacrificial lambs when I saw the mariachi band."

Trainers often speak effusively about their fighters' chances, it being no risk to them, and Daley was no exception. As trainers do sometimes, he even used the plural pronoun when only Witherspoon would do the fighting, as in, "We're going to win." Witherspoon himself sounded confident, but more realistic. "I'm going to put on a good show," he said. "I got no quit in me. You never know, you might land that right shot."

He was said to be 36 years old. In high school in San Jose, he competed in football, wrestling and track and field. He played football briefly at Washington State, when the future Redskin Mark Rypien was the quarterback. "My problem was," Witherspoon said with regret, "I majored in partying."

That changed. He spent four years in the Marines, he said, serving in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War. "It made me miss home a lot," he said. He also boxed in the Marines, experience enough to dispel any notion that he might freeze at the sound of the bell.

The "up-and-comer" he would face, ironically, also was named Witherspoon. But Chazz Witherspoon, 23, of Philadelphia, whose record also was 1-0, has prominent backers and is being treated as a future adornment in the heavyweight division. He is a cousin of a former heavyweight champion, and is close to getting a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical marketing from Saint Joseph's University. Borrowing part of Jack Dempsey's moniker, a publicist has dubbed Chazz Witherspoon "The Mensa Mauler."

Even way down in Louisiana, Yul Witherspoon heard about him. "I know his career," he said. But his own goal, modest as it was, reprised the kind of approach that often came in handy even for some famous fighters, notably old Archie Moore, the incomparable light heavyweight, who many times found himself in strange towns under difficult circumstances. "Some guys set these real high goals," Yul Witherspoon said. "I just want to leave Baltimore 2-0."

Waiting Around

Blurry-eyed from the ophthalmologist's, Witherspoon and Soileau were driven to a nearby fitness center where they were to fill out paperwork, take physicals and weigh in. They kept blinking, trying to focus. An array of people filled a large room: a dozen or more boxers, all their handlers, doctors, Maryland boxing commission officials, relatives of the fighters. Chazz Witherspoon was down the hall, giving an interview to a Baltimore TV station. He was tall and had a beard and, with his shirt off, a sculpted body.

Denise Witherspoon, Chazz's mother, sized up Yul Witherspoon. "He looks like a Witherspoon. His shoulders, his neck. I guess before this is over, we're going to find out."

With Chazz in the room, the two Witherspoon fighters began a dance of the heavyweights that would last for the next 24 hours, the purpose of which was to avoid each other. Yul made light of it. "Most times you meet somebody and you might get into a fight with them," he said. "In our case we fight and then we meet."

Chris Middendorf, who was working at a table, was responsible for Yul being there. As the matchmaker, it was Middendorf's job to keep everyone involved happy: the commission, both fighters and their camps (especially the favorite, but not disrespecting the "opponent" and his people so as to cut off relations with them) and the majority of fans (there's always some who want blood). Middendorf, 53, who lives in Kensington, had done business before with Scott Daley's father, Phil, proprietor of Daley's Boxing Studio in Lake Charles, La. "I knew the gym seems to specialize in heavyweights," Middendorf said. Not long ago he got a lightly regarded heavyweight from Daley and matched him in Vegas with Nigerian Olympian Duncan Dokiwari. What happened shocked a whole lot of people, Middendorf included. "The kid knocked out Dokiwari in the first round," Middendorf said. "Out cold."

Sometimes a meteorite hits the earth; sometimes the "opponent" wins.