Frank Butcher
Blue Belt
- Joined
- May 8, 2007
- Messages
- 575
- Reaction score
- 0
YOU are going to hate this story.
It's a tale of anguish, misery and suffering. It's a tragedy as grotesque as "Irish" Billy Collins's face the night nearly 25 years ago when the fighter Luis Resto and his trainer, Panama Lewis, assaulted Collins.
They permanently damaged Collins's vision, ended his boxing career when the 21-year-old was undefeated in 14 pro fights, and set in motion gears that would drive Collins toward his death nine months later.
Their weapons: Resto's fists and boxing gloves, from which padding had been removed.
Resto disclosed in a news conference that in addition to being aware that Lewis had doctored his gloves, his hand wraps had been soaked in plaster, which hardened into casts.
So when Collins told his father and trainer, Billy Collins snr, midway through the fight that it felt as if Resto (20-8-2, 8 KOs) had rocks in his gloves, it was because Resto essentially did.
All these years later, we discover the horror more horrible than imagined. But this truth sets no one free.
To watch their June 16, 1983, Madison Square Garden fight on YouTube, Resto's punches striking Collins's skull like hammerheads, sickens. To see Collins's bruised face after the 10-round fight, eyelids blackened, puffed and hooded shut (it looks as if he's wearing a zombie mask), nauseates.
To hear how Collins's iris was torn, how he drank and sank into depression and a sinkhole of jobs he couldn't hold, and of how he reportedly hit his 18-year-old wife, saddens. In the early hours of March 7, 1984, Billy Collins drove his '72 Oldsmobile Cutlass off a road and into a creek near his Antioch home in Tennessee. Collins was driving too fast and had drunk too much. But some family members and boxing fans cite another cause of death.
They say Collins died that night in the ring. That might be an overstatement. Resto and Lewis didn't pry Collins's mouth open for drinks or insert his keys into the ignition.
But they killed something inside him. They robbed him of his dream and the vision with which to discover another. That can destroy a man, too.
Resto and Lewis served 2
It's a tale of anguish, misery and suffering. It's a tragedy as grotesque as "Irish" Billy Collins's face the night nearly 25 years ago when the fighter Luis Resto and his trainer, Panama Lewis, assaulted Collins.
They permanently damaged Collins's vision, ended his boxing career when the 21-year-old was undefeated in 14 pro fights, and set in motion gears that would drive Collins toward his death nine months later.
Their weapons: Resto's fists and boxing gloves, from which padding had been removed.
Resto disclosed in a news conference that in addition to being aware that Lewis had doctored his gloves, his hand wraps had been soaked in plaster, which hardened into casts.
So when Collins told his father and trainer, Billy Collins snr, midway through the fight that it felt as if Resto (20-8-2, 8 KOs) had rocks in his gloves, it was because Resto essentially did.
All these years later, we discover the horror more horrible than imagined. But this truth sets no one free.
To watch their June 16, 1983, Madison Square Garden fight on YouTube, Resto's punches striking Collins's skull like hammerheads, sickens. To see Collins's bruised face after the 10-round fight, eyelids blackened, puffed and hooded shut (it looks as if he's wearing a zombie mask), nauseates.
To hear how Collins's iris was torn, how he drank and sank into depression and a sinkhole of jobs he couldn't hold, and of how he reportedly hit his 18-year-old wife, saddens. In the early hours of March 7, 1984, Billy Collins drove his '72 Oldsmobile Cutlass off a road and into a creek near his Antioch home in Tennessee. Collins was driving too fast and had drunk too much. But some family members and boxing fans cite another cause of death.
They say Collins died that night in the ring. That might be an overstatement. Resto and Lewis didn't pry Collins's mouth open for drinks or insert his keys into the ignition.
But they killed something inside him. They robbed him of his dream and the vision with which to discover another. That can destroy a man, too.
Resto and Lewis served 2
