Ban on Panama Lewis meant for a lifetime

By Bernard Fernandez

If it had involved marginal baseball or football players, the announcement probably would have only made the transactions listings of a newspaper’s agate page, and read something like this:

BOXING: Panama Lewis has been relieved of his duties as the trainer of Russian heavyweights Sultan and Timor Ibragimov.

As the Ibragimovs have yet to establish themselves as major contenders in even a depleted heavyweight division, and Carlos Humberto “Panama” Lewis has been out of the public eye for more than two decades, a few lines of agate type might be all that such a notice merited. It wasn’t nearly as newsworthy as, say, an update on Oscar De La Hoya’s career plans would have been.

But for those who still dare to believe that a soiled sport can clean up after itself, the most recent dismissal of Panama Lewis should not be overlooked, even if it was done for all the wrong reasons.

“Panama was great because he taught them a lot, but we need to go in a different direction,” said Boris Grinberg, who manages the Ibragimovs. “We especially want someone who is able to be in the corner.”

And unless some latter-day Moses comes down from the mountain with stone tablets proclaiming that Lewis has been unfairly persecuted for these past 23 years, out of the corner – any fighter’s corner – is where boxing’s equivalent of Pete Rose must remain. Oh, sure, the fight game might be the “red-light district of sports,” as the late columnist Jimmy Cannon once observed, but even in boxing some things should not be for sale.

It says here that the lifetime ban issued by the New York State Athletic Commission against Panama Lewis in 1986, which effectively bars the convicted felon from working as a cornerman anywhere in the United States, must continue to be observed if boxing is to retain what few shreds of dignity it has.

“They ought to put him in the garbage,” former three-division world champion Alexis Arguello once said of Lewis.

Lewis, born in Panama but schooled in such gritty New York sweat boxes as Bobby Gleason’s Gym and Stillman’s Gym, has worn a scarlet letter since the night of June 16, 1983, when he maliciously and criminally was the architect of, or at least party to, a scheme to tip a professional boxing match in favor of one of his fighters.

A well-regarded welterweight prospect named “Irish” Billy Collins Jr. from Tennessee brought a 14-0 record, with 11 knockouts, to Madison Square Garden that night for his bout with Bronx veteran Luis Resto, who was 20-8-2. An impressive victory on the brightly lit stage at the Garden would have fast-tracked Collins for a world ranking and some major paydays.
Everyone agreed it was an upset when Resto scored a one-sided decision over 10 rounds, in the process transforming Collins’ eyes into two ugly, purple hematomas. Still shaken by what had happened to his son, trainer Billy Collins Sr., himself a former fighter, went over to congratulate Resto when he noticed that the winner’s gloves seemed unusually -- and dangerously -- thin.

The elder Collins lodged a complaint and Resto’s gloves were impounded. A subsequent investigation revealed that holes had been cut in the palms of the gloves and a substantial amount of horsehair padding removed. For all intents and purposes, Resto had been punching Collins in the face with his bare hands, causing irreparable damage to Collins’ right eye.

Resto’s tainted victory, of course, was changed to a no-decision and Lewis was suspended for one year by the New York State Athletic Commission, a penalty which was upgraded to a lifetime ban after he was convicted in 1986 of second- and third-degree assault, criminal possession of a weapon (Resto’s fists) and tampering with a sports contest. Lewis was sentenced to three years, of which he served two; Resto spent one year behind bars.

The incarceration of Lewis and Resto seemed like a small price for the miscreants to pay, as far as a grieving Billy Collins Sr. was concerned. Nine months after his loss to Resto, a despondent and perhaps suicidal Billy Collins Jr., under the influence of alcohol, drove his car into a ditch and was killed.

Randy Gordon, editor of The Ring magazine at the time, believed Lewis was an accomplice to murder, or at least manslaughter.

“Panama Lewis should never, ever be allowed to work in boxing,” Gordon said when Pennsylvania inexplicably granted the trainer a license in 1991. “Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life. He was banned for betting on the sport. You don’t see Pete Rose in a dugout. He can’t put on a uniform. He can’t be voted into the Hall of Fame, although his accomplishments on the field clearly merit that. But baseball has rules and it has enforced those rules.

“Should boxing be expected to do any less? This guy’s crime was against the sport of boxing. Boxing shouldn’t allow him back in, and won’t if I have any say in it. They can take it to whatever court they want.”

Upon his release from prison, Lewis – who had worked with, among others, Roberto Duran, Aaron Pryor, Vito Antuofermo, Mike McCallum and Livingstone Bramble – was employed for a time as a salad preparer in a Manhattan cafeteria. But Lewis soon wearing of chopping lettuce and sprinkling croutons. He sought to get back into boxing, on the premise that he had done his time and paid his debt to society.

Although Pennsylvania and Florida did temporarily grant licenses to Lewis, other states declined to do so and he was obliged to take whatever training gigs he could, albeit with the understanding that he could not accompany any of his fighters into the ring or work their corners.

“It’s OK,” Lewis said of the restrictions placed upon him. “When a man trains a racehorse, does he ride it or does he look for a jockey?”

Passage of the Professional Boxing Safety Act, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1997, provided that all states recognize license suspensions issued by one state. And New York wasn’t ever going to its seal of approval to Panama Lewis, no matter how many (ital) mea culpas he recited.

Don King threw Lewis a lifeline of sorts and hired him to work with King-promoted fighters at His Hairness’ Orrwell, Ohio, training complex. There was even a rumor that Lewis would get the plum assignment to whip Mike Tyson back into shape when Tyson was released from prison in Indiana, where he served 3½ years on a rape conviction.

“I’m a good trainer and I would bring out the best in Tyson,” Lewis said in anticipation of a job he didn’t get. “I’ve worked with some great fighters, and one of the reasons they were great is me. I am one of the best motivators you will ever see in boxing.”

Perhaps Lewis’ most significant post-Resto role was with heavyweight contender Francois Botha. Lewis did the grunt work with Botha in the gym, but he was absent from the corner on Jan. 16, 1999, when Tyson, who trailed on the scorecards through four rounds, starched the “White Buffalo” with a crushing right hand in Round 5 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Ironically, Gordon had been hired by Botha’s manager, Sterling McPherson, as a media consultant for the bout with Tyson.

“I still think Panama did it,” Gordon said at the time. “But we have come to an understanding of each other’s roles in terms of helping Frans Botha.

“The thing is, Panama never has talked to me about the Collins incident. He’s never really talked to anyone about it. But I will get him to answer one question before we leave this town. I want him to tell me, face-to-face, whether he did this thing or not. If he tells me he didn’t, and I can see in his eyes that what he’s saying is true, I will do everything I can to change a situation that I am largely responsible for bring about. Until that happens, well, the situation is what it is.”

Gordon had that meeting with Lewis and now, 7½ years later, he said he did not get the definitive answer he had sought. But his hard-line stance toward Lewis has softened somewhat.

“Kind of indirectly he indicated to me that he didn’t do it, but he said that, as head of Resto’s team, he had to take the fall for it,” Gordon said. “I do know that he is incredibly sorry that it ever happened.

“It was a very emotional meeting. He sat in front of me, sobbing his eyes out, and it was no act. He kept saying how sorry he was. He said, `I would never in a million years allow something like that to happen again.’ But it did happen. Even if he had just knowledge of it and did nothing to stop it, he’s guilty and probably should never work again in boxing.”
Which brings us back to Lewis’ sacking by Grinberg. There is a suspicion it was done not so much because Lewis is unavailable to work the corners of the brothers Ibragimov, but because Sultan Ibragimov was so pedestrian in his recent draw with journeyman Ray Austin. In boxing, someone always has to be the scapegoat when a fighter performs less well than expected, and that someone often is the trainer.

Maybe Panama Lewis is truly repentant, or maybe he is just sorry that, professionally speaking, he has been placed inside a barless cage of his own making.

In any case, Billy Collins Jr. is dead and no amount of tears can bring him back or right one of the most egregious wrongs in boxing history.