BOXING KHAN v PETERSON:AL AND his pal were shooting the breeze about the football flickering on the television in the Lucky Bar on Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC, and the talk turned to boxing.
Not the world title fight here on Saturday night, between local boy Lamont Peterson and Bolton’s Amir Khan, but Joe Frazier, who died last month, and Muhammad Ali, who went into hospital briefly last week and defined the sport in the modern era, along with Joe and several other heavyweights, including Ron Lyle, who also died recently. “Yeah, all we know is dead fighters,” says Al, “and guys who are gonna die”.
They had never heard of Peterson, a world-class fighter with a story to make a statue cry. He and his brother Anthony, who is also on Saturday’s bill, were abandoned before they had even started school. Their father was in prison for dealing drugs and their mother could not handle the pressure of looking after them and their nine siblings. So the family slowly disintegrated.
Lamont and Anthony, who is a year older, stuck together. They lived in bus shelters and abandoned cars, anywhere the cops could not find them in the rougher parts of Washington, of which there are plenty. Lamont was six. The story of the Peterson brothers is simultaneously commonplace and shocking. It is part of the narrative of modern America.
He has a kind face and a warm disposition, but he is deadly serious when he says: “The gym is my home. I’m here two times a day. People I consider my family are here every day. It’s a big family and we been together forever. If I could live in the gym, I would. They just won’t let me.”
When he looks back on what he lived through, he finds it hard to believe. “Sometimes, I think about it. It confuses me but I always end with a laugh. It’s kinda funny to recall what a six year old, seven year old went through . . . you kinda don’t believe it was that way, but it was. I remember, my grandfather had a house but he wouldn’t let us stay there. He had a basement, though, never went in there, so we snuck in. It had mildew clothes, mice, things like that, toilet that was blocked up, but we had to use it. So of course it smelled bad. He came downstairs and was listenin’. My sister was there, too, all in the back where this nasty stuff was. We had to stay there so long, then we end up goin’ to sleep. That probably was the nastiest place I ever had to sleep.
“The last few weeks me and my brother been talkin’ to a lotta kids. Went to a homeless shelter. Heard a few of their stories. Some of them . . . We told ’em some of our stories, let ’em know where we are now to inspire them to do better.
“I would just say it was by the grace of God that we got through those things. Of course we were introduced to (drugs, gangsters) but somehow we were always protected . . . Then we met Barry, he started teachin’ us different things. We knew exactly what to do and what not to do.”
Memories, stark, good and distant, are etched in his face. He recalls the night he met Barry Hunter, part boxing coach, part saint, who will be in his corner on Saturday night. “We were in foster care,” Peterson says, “my father had just got out of prison. We knew we were going to live with Barry so on the weekends we would go over to his mother’s house just to get to know him. We knew he could fight. He said: ‘Throw a few punches for me.’ I was shy, but Anthony said:‘I’ll throw some for you.’ Barry just laughed, and he left. A few months later we got out of foster care and he started training us. I was 10.”
Khan has invited Hilary Clinton to the fight; Lamont is happy his brother is going to be there, along with their extended family.
I tell Al in the Lucky Bar the Peterson boys’ story. His father boxed and he grew up in the 1950s watching the sport live on free-to-air TV, but Al lost interest. He says: “Hey, wish the guy all the best,” he says Would he be watching the fight? “Ya know, maybe I will, maybe I will.”
Guardian Service
