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Phenoms It all worked out for boxer John Ruiz
I first saw John Ruiz fight at a horse track. This was maybe a decade ago. Maybe longer. Maybe less. He was a kid, starting to put together that string of victories you need to step out of the shadows in the boxing world. The promoters fed him some nobody as the feature bout in a live card at Suffolk Downs in East Boston, Mass. as part of a larger pay-per-view show that featured Mike Tyson on the track's many television screens. There weren't a lot of people at the fight and Ruiz, a big kid with a sort of John L. Sullivan style, did his work handily, dropping the nobody in a couple of rounds and I remember wondering: Is this the one? That is the question you always ask at some backwater fight or some minor league baseball game or at the state high school hoops madeness as the latest phenom parades for the public. Is this the one? They come on a conveyor belt, these phenoms. They all have splash and dash and people behind them who predict the greatest of future things. It is only a number of years later when you see the phenom at another line of work -- coaching, teaching, working with his own latest phenom -- that you realize how bumpy that yellow brick road to the top actually is. How many phenoms do you have to watch until you see the phenomenal? How many times does injury, mismanagement, simple lack of interest, simple lack of talent intercede? John Ruiz, heavyweight champion of the world. It is a blessing, for once, to see it all work out in the end. Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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