For a little preview of some of the material inside, check out the most recent ESPN Magazine on the stands, the "Cuba Issue" oddly enough, including a byline I shared with ESPN Mag senior writer Peter Keating on the piece, This Way Out: Inside the high-priced underground economy of smuggling champion boxers.
Brief Amazon description of the book below:
“What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?”
This was the question posed by legendary boxer Teofilo Stevenson in the 1970s, crowned by many as the Muhammad Ali of Cuba, in response to an offer of five million dollars to leave his island to fight Ali. But not all Cubans have come to the same conclusion, let alone with such apparent ease. Guillermo Rigondeaux, the heir to Stevenson’s throne and two-time Olympic champion, sacrificed everything he had in his home country—his wife, his son, his government-subsidized car and house, as well as universal reverence among his fellow citizens—to try to make it in the mecca of big money boxing, the United States of America. But has the chance to make good in America been worth the loss of his national identity and the love of his countrymen? And to what extent has he been corrupted by the promise of untold riches?
In A Cuban Boxer’s Journey from Traitor to Champion, author, filmmaker and journalist Brin-Jonathan Butler chronicles the fascinating and tumultuous career of Rigondeaux—moody, driven, and almost mythically talented––as he attempts to capture the elusive and often punishing American Dream. See how this athlete’s most daunting challenge becomes how he can survive the complex forces outside of the ring.
