Alfredo Evangelista wasn’t seen or heard from by boxing fans for over a year following his loss in Holmes-Evangelista IV. During that time, other heavyweights scrambled to fill the two-time former world heavyweight champion’s shoes and sportswriters around the globe were wondering if Evangelista’s bout at the Superdome might have been his swan song as a fighter. Certainly many of Holmes’ fans didn’t seem to doubt Evangelista was finished; the more vocal among them were crowing their man had driven Evangelista out of the ring for good.

    And in truth Evangelista had at least toyed with the possibility of retiring from boxing in the wake of his agonizing loss to Holmes. His defeat in the Superdome had been one of the worst moments of his career, and his morale was at its lowest point since the ending of his first reign as world heavyweight champion; he had terminated his post- match press conference five minutes ahead of schedule, leading some of the sportswriters in attendance to wonder if it would be his farewell as a heavyweight.

    In Uruguay the sporting public was in a state of near-depression over the possibility Evangelista might never step in the ring again. He’d been a source of pride for their often-overlooked country since he first won the world heavyweight title, and losing that pride would be a heavy blow. Young aspiring fighters did what they could in order to fill the gap, but it wasn’t the same. Few of them had anything even close to the kind of natural talent Evangelista possessed, and none of them projected the kind of star quality which had made him a worldwide icon among fight fans.

   Some of his fellow Uruguayans weren’t content to just let him fade away into the pages of boxing history. Determined to get him back into the ring and on top of the heavyweight ranks, they started a club that had the express goal of coaxing him out of his seclusion and back into action. This club became a fixture in the cantinas and sporting arenas of Montevideo and its suburbs; at one point, the club’s chairman could be recognized by some people more easily than Uruguay’s president.

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   The club’s efforts to get Evangelista to return to the ring had more than a little support back in the States. Fight fans in awe of the two-time former champion’s fearless no-holds-barred style wanted to see him avenge his defeat in Holmes-Evangelista IV; promoters and odds-makers who recognized his incredible ability for drawing crowds longed to book him in a major bout in Vegas or Madison Square Garden. The American sports media, who had tabbed Evangelista as the ultimate “average Joe makes good” story, missed the entertaining interviews he had given during his two stints as world heavyweight champion.         The club gradually spread throughout the rest of South America, then expanded into Mexico, and by March of 1983 had established its first U.S. branch in a suburb of Newark, New Jersey. ESPN, already well on its way by then to becoming the broadcast media giant we all know today, helped boost the club’s profile with a series of special reports on its members and their quest to get the two-time ex-world heavyweight champion back in the ring.         Evangelista’s absence from the fight scene was a big enough story that Time magazine’s first major cover story of 1983 focused primarily on the efforts of the international boxing fan community to bring him back to active competition. The story quoted a veteran British boxing writer as saying “boxing without Alfredo Evangelista is like the Louvre without the Mona Lisa”. That sentence nearly summarized the feelings of millions of fight enthusiasts the world over; some especially avid fans went so far as to travel to the Vatican to ask for divine intervention in their quest to bring Evangelista out of his self-imposed exile. For such people Evangelista’s absence from the ring felt like a preview of the Apocalypse. Every day the sports pages of newspapers on both sides of the equator printed a growing number of letters from readers voicing fear that the very sport of boxing itself might wither into extinction sooner or later if the two-time former champion stayed out much longer. He was the heart and soul of the fight game, those letters proclaimed, and without him the crowds that came to watch the fights might dwindle away to nothing.

     It would take until mid-July of 1983 for Evangelista to emerge from his self-imposed seclusion. But when he finally did return to the public eye, he did so in the most dramatic way possible: he arranged an interview with 60 Minutes. In that interview, he disclosed that he had been struggling for months with the decision about whether to come back to the ring and make another run at the world heavyweight championship or retire from boxing altogether. After months of contemplation-- and a great many sleepless nights remembering how his last bout against Larry Holmes had ended --he had come to the conclusion it was time for him to end his self-imposed exile and put on the gloves again. To that end the two-time former world champion would shortly be traveling to Mexico for the start of a training regimen intended to whip him back into fighting shape.

      It was music to the ears of fight fans in general and Alfredo Evangelista fans in particular. The day Evangelista showed up at the Aeromexico terminal in Montevideo's main airport to board the flight which would take him to Mexico City, the waiting room was jammed to bursting with reporters and fans eager to witness what was sure to be one of the greatest boxing comebacks of all time. Visions of a third Evangelista world title reign danced in the heads of boxing fans and promoters everywhere; even people who'd never seen a boxing match in their lives were interested to see where the Uruguayan sensation could reach the top of the mountain one more time...

To be continued