There are some killer professions out there. Some of them chew up youth with a vengeance, only to disdainfully spit it back out. Ballet and opera come to mind. But boxing, without a doubt, is the cruelest, most brutal, and inhumane profession of all, devouring lives in its path in exchange for little or no reward.
El Niño Valdés, Cuba’s reigning heavyweight champion during the fifties is a prime example of the tragedy of boxing, a tragedy repeated ad nauseam throughout the 20th Century, and even into the 21st, although the world of boxing today is a totally different animal, and no longer what it was during the heyday of Jack Johnson, Kid Chocolate, Kid Gavilán, and El Niño Valdés.
Gerardo Ramos Valdés was born in La Habana on December 5, 1924. That much is certain. What I am not certain of is his real birth name. The Internet and the media of his time refer to him alternately as Gerardo, Geraldo or Giraldo. Then there is the question of whether his last names were Ramos Valdés or Valdés Ramos. And then there is the name Poinciano, which appears as part of his last name on the Internet, yet Poinciano in Spanish is a name, not a last name, so the question of El Niño’s real name must therefore go unanswered for now. As a Cuban, with Spanish being my native tongue, I would make an educated guess and surmise that his given name was either Gerardo Poinciano Ramos Valdés or Gerardo Poinciano Valdés Ramos.
Further complication arises because in the United States El Niño Valdés lost his ñ and the accent on Valdés, and became known here and overseas as Nino Valdes, thereby completely obliterating the irony of his professional name, because el niño in Spanish means the child, the kid, the little boy.
As to how he acquired this particular sobriquet, legend has it that one day his mother went to see Luis Felipe “Pincho” Gutiérrez and told him, “Señor Pincho, my little boy wants to be a boxer, and since you made a world champion out of Kid Chocolate, I thought maybe you could do the same for him”.
Gutiérrez agreed to give the little boy a tryout, and the next day Valdés’ mother showed up at the gym with her “little boy”, a 15-year old, 6’ 3” giant. So from that day on he was known as El Niño Valdés, which means little boy Valdés in Spanish.
Today, Pincho Gutiérrez is associated mostly with the fine work he did as trainer and manager of Kid Chocolate, but his contribution to the world of Cuban boxing was much more than that. Gutiérrez came from a wealthy family, and he studied in the United States. As a youth he delved into the world of sports and became an expert javelin thrower, thus acquiring his nickname Pincho, which is Spanish for a metal point or spike. He also excelled at rowing and was Cuban champion in that sport. Eventually, he turned to boxing, made a world champion of Kid Chocolate, and was instrumental in the careers of Cuban boxers Gilberto Castillo, Juan Antonio Herrera, Remberto Dúo (aka el Relámpago Sagüero), and the tragic, short lived Eladio “Black Bill” Valdés.
Pincho didn’t have to work too hard with El Niño, who was a natural. By the time he was 17 years old, El Niño had won his first professional fight, knocking out Basilio Ayestarán in La Habana, on December 27, 1941.
Of his next 17 fights, all of which took place in Cuba, El Niño won 12, (9 by knockout, 2 by technical knockout, and 1 by points). He only lost 3 fights, one by points to Mario Raúl Ochoa, and one each by knockout to Julio Lázaro Díaz and Federico Malibrán. Of his two bouts with Cheo Morejón, the first, in 1946, was a draw, and the second, in 1947, a no contest.
After his last bout with Morejón in 1947, El Niño goes international, and he returns to Cuba to fight on native soil only four more times, twice in 1950, once in 1953, and then once more in 1954, winning all four matches. So out of 22 professional fights in his native land, he won 17, most of them by knockout, an impressive record for a young fighter.
El Niño’s first fight outside his native Cuba takes place in Hartford, Connecticut on the 19th of October 1948. His opponent is Jimmy Freeman, and the outcome is a draw. On the 15th of November he wins a bout against Doc Bee in Baltimore Maryland. Barely eleven days later, on 26 November, he is defeated by Archie McBride in Reading, Pennsylvania, perhaps because of too little rest time between matches. But El Niño’s best years are still ahead of him, and he enters the fifties with six consecutive victories in Jacksonville, Florida, La Habana, and New York.
On July 18, 1953 in La Habana, he defeats the reigning national champ, Omelio Agramonte, becoming the new Cuban Heavyweight Champion. He follows this feat with a streak of 10 consecutive victories between 1953 and 1955 in Miami Beach, Tampa, Germany, Cuba, Brussels, New York, Bermuda, and West Virginia.
While elsewhere his name was becoming well known internationally with each new fight, in his native Cuba he was acknowledged and treated as a national hero, not only for his pugilistic achievements but also as a celebrity. A radio and television personality, he was an omnipresent media fixture as spokesman in ads for everything from milk to men’s suits, beef steaks, and soft drinks like Malta Hatuey.
El Niño’s most remembered fight, which has become legendary, was his victory against Ezzard Charles (World Heavyweight Champion from June 22, 1949 to July 18, 1951) at the Miami Beach Auditorium on August 11, 1953, winning by unanimous decision. Had the fight taken place earlier, and had it been a title fight, El Niño Valdés would have become the first ever Cuban World Heavyweight Champion. The Ring magazine ranked Valdés as the number one heavyweight contender for both 1953 and 1954.
As early as 1953 the Valdés camp begins to actively seek a championship bout between El Niño and Rocky Marciano (World Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1956). Unable to ever come to an agreement, all attempts fail, negotiations stall, and Marciano decides to fight other opponents, including Ezzard Charles (twice), whom Valdés had previously defeated in 1953.
In 1954 the NBA names Valdés the only logical contender for Rocky Marciano’s World Heavyweight Championship. But after knocking out Archie Moore at Yankee Stadium on September 21, 1955, Marciano suddenly calls it quits, forever thwarting El Niño’s chance at a championship bout. Valdés never gets the opportunity to fight Marciano, who retires undefeated with a legendary record of 49 consecutive victories (43 by knockout), no losses, and no draws.
We will never know the outcome of a bout between Marciano and Valdés. With a record like Marciano’s, it’s logical to assume that he had nothing to fear. Still, Valdés outweighed him, was 5 inches taller, could throw a killer punch, and had a reach of 78” to Rocky’s 68”. What we do know is that, referring to Valdés having knocked out Don Cockell in London in three rounds when it took Rocky nine rounds to knock down the Brit, Marciano is quoted in The New York Times on September 16, 1955 as saying, “I’ll tell you, I never hit anyone so hard as I did Cockell in the body. I walloped him solid a number of times and yet it didn’t seem to bother him. It certainly surprised me that Valdés handled him so easily”
El Niño was huge in England, and he was the terror of British boxers. He was victorious in all of his bouts in London, Brussels, and Germany. He would only fight in white trunks. For his bout with Ezzard Charles he was given black trunks to wear. The lining was white so El Niño wore the shorts inside out. He won the fight. In London, the British Boxing Board of Control had a long standing rule forbidding any fighter to use white trunks. El Niño’s fight with Don Cockell was almost cancelled because of his insistence on wearing white. Eventually a compromise was reached and he wore his white trunks covered with a dark fabric, but keeping a stripe of the original white down each leg. He won that bout also.
That he was able to get as regimented folk as the British to bend their rules was no surprise, because one thing El Niño had plenty of was charisma. He had a winning, disarming smile that opened doors and melted hearts. He was a humble, simple, non-aggressive man, who spoke softly and slowly off the ring, and he had a good heart. These qualities caused the media to nickname him The Gentle Giant. Unfortunately, because of his gentle nature he also lacked the killer instinct in the ring. He was content just to win a fight fair and square. He never went in for the kill, never abused his strength nor tortured an opponent. But he loved the media, and photographs of the time show him always clowning around, whether it was opening his big mouth to show a photographer his tonsillectomy or getting down on his knees à la Al Jolson and singing a song for the press on his last visit to London.
But that occasion proved to be his swan song. When he climbed into the ring for his bout with Brian London in Wembley on December 1, 1959, he could barely see out of his left eye. Still, he won the fight. Upon his return to the United States he was declared unfit to fight again by his doctor. There would be no more fights.
El Niño then retired from boxing and returned to Cuba. By his own account, in an interview with The New York Times published on July 7, 1974, he was summoned into the office of revolutionary assassin Che Guevara, who demanded that he use his fame to spew communist propaganda against the United States on state controlled Cuban television and radio. Valdés; who was grateful to the United States, the country that launched him into international fame; and whose own son had been born in New York, and was therefore an American citizen; flatly refused to badmouth the United States or to serve as a commie tool. Guevara, one of Castro’s most despicable and reviled henchmen, then gave Valdés 24 hours to get out of Cuba or face the consequences of being a traitor to the revolution. El Niño, as had thousands of other Cubans before and after, had everything he owned taken from him by the dictatorship, and he returned to the country of his triumphs, no longer as a celebrity, but as one more impoverished Cuban political refugee with only $76 in his pocket.
Upon his arrival, El Niño found himself penniless, as his earnings from boxing had mostly gone into the embezzling pockets of his manager Bobby Gleason, and the rest into the private coffers of the dictatorship. Having earned his living with his fists since the age of fifteen, he was reduced to odd jobs to try to eke out a living. He worked in construction, as a butcher, and as a porter on the luxury liner Constitution. Diabetic and totally blind in his left eye, he ended up as a bouncer at the Mardi Grass, a topless joint in Manhattan.
Judging from old press photographs, El Niño was married to a very pretty woman named Delia, although I have no idea if she was Cuban or not, or when the marriage took place. They had a son born on the 11th of February 1958. United Press, which reported the birth, refers to him as Giraldo Junior, Giraldo with an i. But in his last interview with The New York Times, published on July 7, 1974, El Niño refers to his son as Johnny, and says he would not encourage his son to pursue a boxing career. It is unknown to me if El Niño’s marriage to Delia lasted, or ended in divorce, or whether they had other children, but several Internet sources indicate that El Niño was living alone when he died at the age of 76 on June 3, 2001.
The story of El Niño Valdés is doubly tragic. It’s both a Cuban tragedy and a pugilistic one. As a Cuban who opposed the dictatorship, he was forced into the crude adversity of political exile. As a boxer, he was Heavyweight Champion in his own land, and he was acknowledged internationally as one of the best heavyweights of his time, only to fade into oblivion and poverty in his later years.
Boxing, relentless and unforgiving in its cruelty, has taken a toll on Cuban boxers. The most famous Cuban fighter of all time, Kid Chocolate, the first Cuban ever to win a world title, who uttered the self-aggrandizing “¡El boxeo soy yo!” (“I am boxing!”) decades before we heard Norma Desmond say “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small!”, ended up a penniless, syphilitic has been, ostracized by the dictatorship, and denied proper medical care in life, only to be proclaimed a hero of the revolution in death. His good friend, Eladio Valdés, known in the United States as “Black Bill”, blinded by an opponent, committed suicide in his New York apartment in April of 1933. Douglas Vaillant also took his own life. He hung himself in Sewell Park in Miami, where he worked as a trainer. Kid Gavilán ended up a pauper in an assisted living facility in Hialeah, although one can’t really blame boxing for Gavilán’s downfall. Gavilán was always his own worst enemy. Benny Paret died after being beaten to a pulp by Emile Griffith.
Perhaps because most boxers are intellectually challenged, they are unable to carve out a financially secure future for themselves. Regardless of the big money they may have made while their careers were on the upswing, they are more often than not the victims of unscrupulous managers and handlers, and in some cases the pawns of organized crime.
The story of El Niño Valdés does not have a happy ending, although with typical good cheer, he himself claimed he had no regrets about his boxing career, except for the fact that he never got the chance to go one on one with Marciano for the World Heavyweight crown. Still, he didn’t do too badly. He ended his professional career with a record of 48 victories, 18 losses, and 3 draws.
El Niño is no longer, but his legend endures, immortalized in the poem Igual que el Niño Valdés (Just Like El Niño Valdés), written for him by Arturo Liendo and masterfully brought to life by Luis Carbonell in a famous recording. El Niño is no longer, but I, who had not yet been born when he already reigned supreme as the Cuban Heavyweight Champion, today sit in front of a computer and write about him. El Niño is no longer, but he is alive and well on the Internet. El Niño is no longer, but his pugilistic legacy endures in black and white on YouTube. El Niño is no longer, but his essence is staring right back at us in those old photographs. It’s there in his omnipresent, mischievous smile.
El Niño! The Kid! The Gentle Giant! The names suited him to a T. Seven decades have passed since he first burst into the scene, and that smile has not lost its charm. It still captivates.
RAFAEL REMÓN
El Niño Valdés, Cuba’s reigning heavyweight champion during the fifties is a prime example of the tragedy of boxing, a tragedy repeated ad nauseam throughout the 20th Century, and even into the 21st, although the world of boxing today is a totally different animal, and no longer what it was during the heyday of Jack Johnson, Kid Chocolate, Kid Gavilán, and El Niño Valdés.
Gerardo Ramos Valdés was born in La Habana on December 5, 1924. That much is certain. What I am not certain of is his real birth name. The Internet and the media of his time refer to him alternately as Gerardo, Geraldo or Giraldo. Then there is the question of whether his last names were Ramos Valdés or Valdés Ramos. And then there is the name Poinciano, which appears as part of his last name on the Internet, yet Poinciano in Spanish is a name, not a last name, so the question of El Niño’s real name must therefore go unanswered for now. As a Cuban, with Spanish being my native tongue, I would make an educated guess and surmise that his given name was either Gerardo Poinciano Ramos Valdés or Gerardo Poinciano Valdés Ramos.
Further complication arises because in the United States El Niño Valdés lost his ñ and the accent on Valdés, and became known here and overseas as Nino Valdes, thereby completely obliterating the irony of his professional name, because el niño in Spanish means the child, the kid, the little boy.
As to how he acquired this particular sobriquet, legend has it that one day his mother went to see Luis Felipe “Pincho” Gutiérrez and told him, “Señor Pincho, my little boy wants to be a boxer, and since you made a world champion out of Kid Chocolate, I thought maybe you could do the same for him”.
Gutiérrez agreed to give the little boy a tryout, and the next day Valdés’ mother showed up at the gym with her “little boy”, a 15-year old, 6’ 3” giant. So from that day on he was known as El Niño Valdés, which means little boy Valdés in Spanish.
Today, Pincho Gutiérrez is associated mostly with the fine work he did as trainer and manager of Kid Chocolate, but his contribution to the world of Cuban boxing was much more than that. Gutiérrez came from a wealthy family, and he studied in the United States. As a youth he delved into the world of sports and became an expert javelin thrower, thus acquiring his nickname Pincho, which is Spanish for a metal point or spike. He also excelled at rowing and was Cuban champion in that sport. Eventually, he turned to boxing, made a world champion of Kid Chocolate, and was instrumental in the careers of Cuban boxers Gilberto Castillo, Juan Antonio Herrera, Remberto Dúo (aka el Relámpago Sagüero), and the tragic, short lived Eladio “Black Bill” Valdés.
Pincho didn’t have to work too hard with El Niño, who was a natural. By the time he was 17 years old, El Niño had won his first professional fight, knocking out Basilio Ayestarán in La Habana, on December 27, 1941.
Of his next 17 fights, all of which took place in Cuba, El Niño won 12, (9 by knockout, 2 by technical knockout, and 1 by points). He only lost 3 fights, one by points to Mario Raúl Ochoa, and one each by knockout to Julio Lázaro Díaz and Federico Malibrán. Of his two bouts with Cheo Morejón, the first, in 1946, was a draw, and the second, in 1947, a no contest.
After his last bout with Morejón in 1947, El Niño goes international, and he returns to Cuba to fight on native soil only four more times, twice in 1950, once in 1953, and then once more in 1954, winning all four matches. So out of 22 professional fights in his native land, he won 17, most of them by knockout, an impressive record for a young fighter.
El Niño’s first fight outside his native Cuba takes place in Hartford, Connecticut on the 19th of October 1948. His opponent is Jimmy Freeman, and the outcome is a draw. On the 15th of November he wins a bout against Doc Bee in Baltimore Maryland. Barely eleven days later, on 26 November, he is defeated by Archie McBride in Reading, Pennsylvania, perhaps because of too little rest time between matches. But El Niño’s best years are still ahead of him, and he enters the fifties with six consecutive victories in Jacksonville, Florida, La Habana, and New York.
On July 18, 1953 in La Habana, he defeats the reigning national champ, Omelio Agramonte, becoming the new Cuban Heavyweight Champion. He follows this feat with a streak of 10 consecutive victories between 1953 and 1955 in Miami Beach, Tampa, Germany, Cuba, Brussels, New York, Bermuda, and West Virginia.
While elsewhere his name was becoming well known internationally with each new fight, in his native Cuba he was acknowledged and treated as a national hero, not only for his pugilistic achievements but also as a celebrity. A radio and television personality, he was an omnipresent media fixture as spokesman in ads for everything from milk to men’s suits, beef steaks, and soft drinks like Malta Hatuey.
El Niño’s most remembered fight, which has become legendary, was his victory against Ezzard Charles (World Heavyweight Champion from June 22, 1949 to July 18, 1951) at the Miami Beach Auditorium on August 11, 1953, winning by unanimous decision. Had the fight taken place earlier, and had it been a title fight, El Niño Valdés would have become the first ever Cuban World Heavyweight Champion. The Ring magazine ranked Valdés as the number one heavyweight contender for both 1953 and 1954.
As early as 1953 the Valdés camp begins to actively seek a championship bout between El Niño and Rocky Marciano (World Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1956). Unable to ever come to an agreement, all attempts fail, negotiations stall, and Marciano decides to fight other opponents, including Ezzard Charles (twice), whom Valdés had previously defeated in 1953.
In 1954 the NBA names Valdés the only logical contender for Rocky Marciano’s World Heavyweight Championship. But after knocking out Archie Moore at Yankee Stadium on September 21, 1955, Marciano suddenly calls it quits, forever thwarting El Niño’s chance at a championship bout. Valdés never gets the opportunity to fight Marciano, who retires undefeated with a legendary record of 49 consecutive victories (43 by knockout), no losses, and no draws.
We will never know the outcome of a bout between Marciano and Valdés. With a record like Marciano’s, it’s logical to assume that he had nothing to fear. Still, Valdés outweighed him, was 5 inches taller, could throw a killer punch, and had a reach of 78” to Rocky’s 68”. What we do know is that, referring to Valdés having knocked out Don Cockell in London in three rounds when it took Rocky nine rounds to knock down the Brit, Marciano is quoted in The New York Times on September 16, 1955 as saying, “I’ll tell you, I never hit anyone so hard as I did Cockell in the body. I walloped him solid a number of times and yet it didn’t seem to bother him. It certainly surprised me that Valdés handled him so easily”
El Niño was huge in England, and he was the terror of British boxers. He was victorious in all of his bouts in London, Brussels, and Germany. He would only fight in white trunks. For his bout with Ezzard Charles he was given black trunks to wear. The lining was white so El Niño wore the shorts inside out. He won the fight. In London, the British Boxing Board of Control had a long standing rule forbidding any fighter to use white trunks. El Niño’s fight with Don Cockell was almost cancelled because of his insistence on wearing white. Eventually a compromise was reached and he wore his white trunks covered with a dark fabric, but keeping a stripe of the original white down each leg. He won that bout also.
That he was able to get as regimented folk as the British to bend their rules was no surprise, because one thing El Niño had plenty of was charisma. He had a winning, disarming smile that opened doors and melted hearts. He was a humble, simple, non-aggressive man, who spoke softly and slowly off the ring, and he had a good heart. These qualities caused the media to nickname him The Gentle Giant. Unfortunately, because of his gentle nature he also lacked the killer instinct in the ring. He was content just to win a fight fair and square. He never went in for the kill, never abused his strength nor tortured an opponent. But he loved the media, and photographs of the time show him always clowning around, whether it was opening his big mouth to show a photographer his tonsillectomy or getting down on his knees à la Al Jolson and singing a song for the press on his last visit to London.
But that occasion proved to be his swan song. When he climbed into the ring for his bout with Brian London in Wembley on December 1, 1959, he could barely see out of his left eye. Still, he won the fight. Upon his return to the United States he was declared unfit to fight again by his doctor. There would be no more fights.
El Niño then retired from boxing and returned to Cuba. By his own account, in an interview with The New York Times published on July 7, 1974, he was summoned into the office of revolutionary assassin Che Guevara, who demanded that he use his fame to spew communist propaganda against the United States on state controlled Cuban television and radio. Valdés; who was grateful to the United States, the country that launched him into international fame; and whose own son had been born in New York, and was therefore an American citizen; flatly refused to badmouth the United States or to serve as a commie tool. Guevara, one of Castro’s most despicable and reviled henchmen, then gave Valdés 24 hours to get out of Cuba or face the consequences of being a traitor to the revolution. El Niño, as had thousands of other Cubans before and after, had everything he owned taken from him by the dictatorship, and he returned to the country of his triumphs, no longer as a celebrity, but as one more impoverished Cuban political refugee with only $76 in his pocket.
Upon his arrival, El Niño found himself penniless, as his earnings from boxing had mostly gone into the embezzling pockets of his manager Bobby Gleason, and the rest into the private coffers of the dictatorship. Having earned his living with his fists since the age of fifteen, he was reduced to odd jobs to try to eke out a living. He worked in construction, as a butcher, and as a porter on the luxury liner Constitution. Diabetic and totally blind in his left eye, he ended up as a bouncer at the Mardi Grass, a topless joint in Manhattan.
Judging from old press photographs, El Niño was married to a very pretty woman named Delia, although I have no idea if she was Cuban or not, or when the marriage took place. They had a son born on the 11th of February 1958. United Press, which reported the birth, refers to him as Giraldo Junior, Giraldo with an i. But in his last interview with The New York Times, published on July 7, 1974, El Niño refers to his son as Johnny, and says he would not encourage his son to pursue a boxing career. It is unknown to me if El Niño’s marriage to Delia lasted, or ended in divorce, or whether they had other children, but several Internet sources indicate that El Niño was living alone when he died at the age of 76 on June 3, 2001.
The story of El Niño Valdés is doubly tragic. It’s both a Cuban tragedy and a pugilistic one. As a Cuban who opposed the dictatorship, he was forced into the crude adversity of political exile. As a boxer, he was Heavyweight Champion in his own land, and he was acknowledged internationally as one of the best heavyweights of his time, only to fade into oblivion and poverty in his later years.
Boxing, relentless and unforgiving in its cruelty, has taken a toll on Cuban boxers. The most famous Cuban fighter of all time, Kid Chocolate, the first Cuban ever to win a world title, who uttered the self-aggrandizing “¡El boxeo soy yo!” (“I am boxing!”) decades before we heard Norma Desmond say “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small!”, ended up a penniless, syphilitic has been, ostracized by the dictatorship, and denied proper medical care in life, only to be proclaimed a hero of the revolution in death. His good friend, Eladio Valdés, known in the United States as “Black Bill”, blinded by an opponent, committed suicide in his New York apartment in April of 1933. Douglas Vaillant also took his own life. He hung himself in Sewell Park in Miami, where he worked as a trainer. Kid Gavilán ended up a pauper in an assisted living facility in Hialeah, although one can’t really blame boxing for Gavilán’s downfall. Gavilán was always his own worst enemy. Benny Paret died after being beaten to a pulp by Emile Griffith.
Perhaps because most boxers are intellectually challenged, they are unable to carve out a financially secure future for themselves. Regardless of the big money they may have made while their careers were on the upswing, they are more often than not the victims of unscrupulous managers and handlers, and in some cases the pawns of organized crime.
The story of El Niño Valdés does not have a happy ending, although with typical good cheer, he himself claimed he had no regrets about his boxing career, except for the fact that he never got the chance to go one on one with Marciano for the World Heavyweight crown. Still, he didn’t do too badly. He ended his professional career with a record of 48 victories, 18 losses, and 3 draws.
El Niño is no longer, but his legend endures, immortalized in the poem Igual que el Niño Valdés (Just Like El Niño Valdés), written for him by Arturo Liendo and masterfully brought to life by Luis Carbonell in a famous recording. El Niño is no longer, but I, who had not yet been born when he already reigned supreme as the Cuban Heavyweight Champion, today sit in front of a computer and write about him. El Niño is no longer, but he is alive and well on the Internet. El Niño is no longer, but his pugilistic legacy endures in black and white on YouTube. El Niño is no longer, but his essence is staring right back at us in those old photographs. It’s there in his omnipresent, mischievous smile.
El Niño! The Kid! The Gentle Giant! The names suited him to a T. Seven decades have passed since he first burst into the scene, and that smile has not lost its charm. It still captivates.
RAFAEL REMÓN
There are some killer professions out there. Some of them chew up youth with a vengeance, only to disdainfully spit it back out. Ballet and opera come to mind. But boxing, without a doubt, is the cruelest, most brutal, and inhumane profession of all, devouring lives in its path in exchange for little or no reward.
El Niño Valdés, Cuba’s reigning heavyweight champion during the fifties is a prime example of the tragedy of boxing, a tragedy repeated ad nauseam throughout the 20th Century, and even into the 21st, although the world of boxing today is a totally different animal, and no longer what it was during the heyday of Jack Johnson, Kid Chocolate, Kid Gavilán, and El Niño Valdés.
Gerardo Ramos Valdés was born in La Habana on December 5, 1924. That much is certain. What I am not certain of is his real birth name. The Internet and the media of his time refer to him alternately as Gerardo, Geraldo or Giraldo. Then there is the question of whether his last names were Ramos Valdés or Valdés Ramos. And then there is the name Poinciano, which appears as part of his last name on the Internet, yet Poinciano in Spanish is a name, not a last name, so the question of El Niño’s real name must therefore go unanswered for now. As a Cuban, with Spanish being my native tongue, I would make an educated guess and surmise that his given name was either Gerardo Poinciano Ramos Valdés or Gerardo Poinciano Valdés Ramos.
Further complication arises because in the United States El Niño Valdés lost his ñ and the accent on Valdés, and became known here and overseas as Nino Valdes, thereby completely obliterating the irony of his professional name, because el niño in Spanish means the child, the kid, the little boy.
As to how he acquired this particular sobriquet, legend has it that one day his mother went to see Luis Felipe “Pincho” Gutiérrez and told him, “Señor Pincho, my little boy wants to be a boxer, and since you made a world champion out of Kid Chocolate, I thought maybe you could do the same for him”.
Gutiérrez agreed to give the little boy a tryout, and the next day Valdés’ mother showed up at the gym with her “little boy”, a 15-year old, 6’ 3” giant. So from that day on he was known as El Niño Valdés, which means little boy Valdés in Spanish.
Today, Pincho Gutiérrez is associated mostly with the fine work he did as trainer and manager of Kid Chocolate, but his contribution to the world of Cuban boxing was much more than that. Gutiérrez came from a wealthy family, and he studied in the United States. As a youth he delved into the world of sports and became an expert javelin thrower, thus acquiring his nickname Pincho, which is Spanish for a metal point or spike. He also excelled at rowing and was Cuban champion in that sport. Eventually, he turned to boxing, made a world champion of Kid Chocolate, and was instrumental in the careers of Cuban boxers Gilberto Castillo, Juan Antonio Herrera, Remberto Dúo (aka el Relámpago Sagüero), and the tragic, short lived Eladio “Black Bill” Valdés.
Pincho didn’t have to work too hard with El Niño, who was a natural. By the time he was 17 years old, El Niño had won his first professional fight, knocking out Basilio Ayestarán in La Habana, on December 27, 1941.
Of his next 17 fights, all of which took place in Cuba, El Niño won 12, (9 by knockout, 2 by technical knockout, and 1 by points). He only lost 3 fights, one by points to Mario Raúl Ochoa, and one each by knockout to Julio Lázaro Díaz and Federico Malibrán. Of his two bouts with Cheo Morejón, the first, in 1946, was a draw, and the second, in 1947, a no contest.
After his last bout with Morejón in 1947, El Niño goes international, and he returns to Cuba to fight on native soil only four more times, twice in 1950, once in 1953, and then once more in 1954, winning all four matches. So out of 22 professional fights in his native land, he won 17, most of them by knockout, an impressive record for a young fighter.
El Niño’s first fight outside his native Cuba takes place in Hartford, Connecticut on the 19th of October 1948. His opponent is Jimmy Freeman, and the outcome is a draw. On the 15th of November he wins a bout against Doc Bee in Baltimore Maryland. Barely eleven days later, on 26 November, he is defeated by Archie McBride in Reading, Pennsylvania, perhaps because of too little rest time between matches. But El Niño’s best years are still ahead of him, and he enters the fifties with six consecutive victories in Jacksonville, Florida, La Habana, and New York.
On July 18, 1953 in La Habana, he defeats the reigning national champ, Omelio Agramonte, becoming the new Cuban Heavyweight Champion. He follows this feat with a streak of 10 consecutive victories between 1953 and 1955 in Miami Beach, Tampa, Germany, Cuba, Brussels, New York, Bermuda, and West Virginia.
While elsewhere his name was becoming well known internationally with each new fight, in his native Cuba he was acknowledged and treated as a national hero, not only for his pugilistic achievements but also as a celebrity. A radio and television personality, he was an omnipresent media fixture as spokesman in ads for everything from milk to men’s suits, beef steaks, and soft drinks like Malta Hatuey.
El Niño’s most remembered fight, which has become legendary, was his victory against Ezzard Charles (World Heavyweight Champion from June 22, 1949 to July 18, 1951) at the Miami Beach Auditorium on August 11, 1953, winning by unanimous decision. Had the fight taken place earlier, and had it been a title fight, El Niño Valdés would have become the first ever Cuban World Heavyweight Champion. The Ring magazine ranked Valdés as the number one heavyweight contender for both 1953 and 1954.
As early as 1953 the Valdés camp begins to actively seek a championship bout between El Niño and Rocky Marciano (World Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1956). Unable to ever come to an agreement, all attempts fail, negotiations stall, and Marciano decides to fight other opponents, including Ezzard Charles (twice), whom Valdés had previously defeated in 1953.
In 1954 the NBA names Valdés the only logical contender for Rocky Marciano’s World Heavyweight Championship. But after knocking out Archie Moore at Yankee Stadium on September 21, 1955, Marciano suddenly calls it quits, forever thwarting El Niño’s chance at a championship bout. Valdés never gets the opportunity to fight Marciano, who retires undefeated with a legendary record of 49 consecutive victories (43 by knockout), no losses, and no draws.
We will never know the outcome of a bout between Marciano and Valdés. With a record like Marciano’s, it’s logical to assume that he had nothing to fear. Still, Valdés outweighed him, was 5 inches taller, could throw a killer punch, and had a reach of 78” to Rocky’s 68”. What we do know is that, referring to Valdés having knocked out Don Cockell in London in three rounds when it took Rocky nine rounds to knock down the Brit, Marciano is quoted in The New York Times on September 16, 1955 as saying, “I’ll tell you, I never hit anyone so hard as I did Cockell in the body. I walloped him solid a number of times and yet it didn’t seem to bother him. It certainly surprised me that Valdés handled him so easily”
El Niño was huge in England, and he was the terror of British boxers. He was victorious in all of his bouts in London, Brussels, and Germany. He would only fight in white trunks. For his bout with Ezzard Charles he was given black trunks to wear. The lining was white so El Niño wore the shorts inside out. He won the fight. In London, the British Boxing Board of Control had a long standing rule forbidding any fighter to use white trunks. El Niño’s fight with Don Cockell was almost cancelled because of his insistence on wearing white. Eventually a compromise was reached and he wore his white trunks covered with a dark fabric, but keeping a stripe of the original white down each leg. He won that bout also.
That he was able to get as regimented folk as the British to bend their rules was no surprise, because one thing El Niño had plenty of was charisma. He had a winning, disarming smile that opened doors and melted hearts. He was a humble, simple, non-aggressive man, who spoke softly and slowly off the ring, and he had a good heart. These qualities caused the media to nickname him The Gentle Giant. Unfortunately, because of his gentle nature he also lacked the killer instinct in the ring. He was content just to win a fight fair and square. He never went in for the kill, never abused his strength nor tortured an opponent. But he loved the media, and photographs of the time show him always clowning around, whether it was opening his big mouth to show a photographer his tonsillectomy or getting down on his knees à la Al Jolson and singing a song for the press on his last visit to London.
But that occasion proved to be his swan song. When he climbed into the ring for his bout with Brian London in Wembley on December 1, 1959, he could barely see out of his left eye. Still, he won the fight. Upon his return to the United States he was declared unfit to fight again by his doctor. There would be no more fights.
El Niño then retired from boxing and returned to Cuba. By his own account, in an interview with The New York Times published on July 7, 1974, he was summoned into the office of revolutionary assassin Che Guevara, who demanded that he use his fame to spew communist propaganda against the United States on state controlled Cuban television and radio. Valdés; who was grateful to the United States, the country that launched him into international fame; and whose own son had been born in New York, and was therefore an American citizen; flatly refused to badmouth the United States or to serve as a commie tool. Guevara, one of Castro’s most despicable and reviled henchmen, then gave Valdés 24 hours to get out of Cuba or face the consequences of being a traitor to the revolution. El Niño, as had thousands of other Cubans before and after, had everything he owned taken from him by the dictatorship, and he returned to the country of his triumphs, no longer as a celebrity, but as one more impoverished Cuban political refugee with only $76 in his pocket.
Upon his arrival, El Niño found himself penniless, as his earnings from boxing had mostly gone into the embezzling pockets of his manager Bobby Gleason, and the rest into the private coffers of the dictatorship. Having earned his living with his fists since the age of fifteen, he was reduced to odd jobs to try to eke out a living. He worked in construction, as a butcher, and as a porter on the luxury liner Constitution. Diabetic and totally blind in his left eye, he ended up as a bouncer at the Mardi Grass, a topless joint in Manhattan.
Judging from old press photographs, El Niño was married to a very pretty woman named Delia, although I have no idea if she was Cuban or not, or when the marriage took place. They had a son born on the 11th of February 1958. United Press, which reported the birth, refers to him as Giraldo Junior, Giraldo with an i. But in his last interview with The New York Times, published on July 7, 1974, El Niño refers to his son as Johnny, and says he would not encourage his son to pursue a boxing career. It is unknown to me if El Niño’s marriage to Delia lasted, or ended in divorce, or whether they had other children, but several Internet sources indicate that El Niño was living alone when he died at the age of 76 on June 3, 2001.
The story of El Niño Valdés is doubly tragic. It’s both a Cuban tragedy and a pugilistic one. As a Cuban who opposed the dictatorship, he was forced into the crude adversity of political exile. As a boxer, he was Heavyweight Champion in his own land, and he was acknowledged internationally as one of the best heavyweights of his time, only to fade into oblivion and poverty in his later years.
Boxing, relentless and unforgiving in its cruelty, has taken a toll on Cuban boxers. The most famous Cuban fighter of all time, Kid Chocolate, the first Cuban ever to win a world title, who uttered the self-aggrandizing “¡El boxeo soy yo!” (“I am boxing!”) decades before we heard Norma Desmond say “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small!”, ended up a penniless, syphilitic has been, ostracized by the dictatorship, and denied proper medical care in life, only to be proclaimed a hero of the revolution in death. His good friend, Eladio Valdés, known in the United States as “Black Bill”, blinded by an opponent, committed suicide in his New York apartment in April of 1933. Douglas Vaillant also took his own life. He hung himself in Sewell Park in Miami, where he worked as a trainer. Kid Gavilán ended up a pauper in an assisted living facility in Hialeah, although one can’t really blame boxing for Gavilán’s downfall. Gavilán was always his own worst enemy. Benny Paret died after being beaten to a pulp by Emile Griffith.
Perhaps because most boxers are intellectually challenged, they are unable to carve out a financially secure future for themselves. Regardless of the big money they may have made while their careers were on the upswing, they are more often than not the victims of unscrupulous managers and handlers, and in some cases the pawns of organized crime.
The story of El Niño Valdés does not have a happy ending, although with typical good cheer, he himself claimed he had no regrets about his boxing career, except for the fact that he never got the chance to go one on one with Marciano for the World Heavyweight crown. Still, he didn’t do too badly. He ended his professional career with a record of 48 victories, 18 losses, and 3 draws.
El Niño is no longer, but his legend endures, immortalized in the poem Igual que el Niño Valdés (Just Like El Niño Valdés), written for him by Arturo Liendo and masterfully brought to life by Luis Carbonell in a famous recording. El Niño is no longer, but I, who had not yet been born when he already reigned supreme as the Cuban Heavyweight Champion, today sit in front of a computer and write about him. El Niño is no longer, but he is alive and well on the Internet. El Niño is no longer, but his pugilistic legacy endures in black and white on YouTube. El Niño is no longer, but his essence is staring right back at us in those old photographs. It’s there in his omnipresent, mischievous smile.
El Niño! The Kid! The Gentle Giant! The names suited him to a T. Seven decades have passed since he first burst into the scene, and that smile has not lost its charm. It still captivates.
RAFAEL REMÓN
El Niño Valdés, Cuba’s reigning heavyweight champion during the fifties is a prime example of the tragedy of boxing, a tragedy repeated ad nauseam throughout the 20th Century, and even into the 21st, although the world of boxing today is a totally different animal, and no longer what it was during the heyday of Jack Johnson, Kid Chocolate, Kid Gavilán, and El Niño Valdés.
Gerardo Ramos Valdés was born in La Habana on December 5, 1924. That much is certain. What I am not certain of is his real birth name. The Internet and the media of his time refer to him alternately as Gerardo, Geraldo or Giraldo. Then there is the question of whether his last names were Ramos Valdés or Valdés Ramos. And then there is the name Poinciano, which appears as part of his last name on the Internet, yet Poinciano in Spanish is a name, not a last name, so the question of El Niño’s real name must therefore go unanswered for now. As a Cuban, with Spanish being my native tongue, I would make an educated guess and surmise that his given name was either Gerardo Poinciano Ramos Valdés or Gerardo Poinciano Valdés Ramos.
Further complication arises because in the United States El Niño Valdés lost his ñ and the accent on Valdés, and became known here and overseas as Nino Valdes, thereby completely obliterating the irony of his professional name, because el niño in Spanish means the child, the kid, the little boy.
As to how he acquired this particular sobriquet, legend has it that one day his mother went to see Luis Felipe “Pincho” Gutiérrez and told him, “Señor Pincho, my little boy wants to be a boxer, and since you made a world champion out of Kid Chocolate, I thought maybe you could do the same for him”.
Gutiérrez agreed to give the little boy a tryout, and the next day Valdés’ mother showed up at the gym with her “little boy”, a 15-year old, 6’ 3” giant. So from that day on he was known as El Niño Valdés, which means little boy Valdés in Spanish.
Today, Pincho Gutiérrez is associated mostly with the fine work he did as trainer and manager of Kid Chocolate, but his contribution to the world of Cuban boxing was much more than that. Gutiérrez came from a wealthy family, and he studied in the United States. As a youth he delved into the world of sports and became an expert javelin thrower, thus acquiring his nickname Pincho, which is Spanish for a metal point or spike. He also excelled at rowing and was Cuban champion in that sport. Eventually, he turned to boxing, made a world champion of Kid Chocolate, and was instrumental in the careers of Cuban boxers Gilberto Castillo, Juan Antonio Herrera, Remberto Dúo (aka el Relámpago Sagüero), and the tragic, short lived Eladio “Black Bill” Valdés.
Pincho didn’t have to work too hard with El Niño, who was a natural. By the time he was 17 years old, El Niño had won his first professional fight, knocking out Basilio Ayestarán in La Habana, on December 27, 1941.
Of his next 17 fights, all of which took place in Cuba, El Niño won 12, (9 by knockout, 2 by technical knockout, and 1 by points). He only lost 3 fights, one by points to Mario Raúl Ochoa, and one each by knockout to Julio Lázaro Díaz and Federico Malibrán. Of his two bouts with Cheo Morejón, the first, in 1946, was a draw, and the second, in 1947, a no contest.
After his last bout with Morejón in 1947, El Niño goes international, and he returns to Cuba to fight on native soil only four more times, twice in 1950, once in 1953, and then once more in 1954, winning all four matches. So out of 22 professional fights in his native land, he won 17, most of them by knockout, an impressive record for a young fighter.
El Niño’s first fight outside his native Cuba takes place in Hartford, Connecticut on the 19th of October 1948. His opponent is Jimmy Freeman, and the outcome is a draw. On the 15th of November he wins a bout against Doc Bee in Baltimore Maryland. Barely eleven days later, on 26 November, he is defeated by Archie McBride in Reading, Pennsylvania, perhaps because of too little rest time between matches. But El Niño’s best years are still ahead of him, and he enters the fifties with six consecutive victories in Jacksonville, Florida, La Habana, and New York.
On July 18, 1953 in La Habana, he defeats the reigning national champ, Omelio Agramonte, becoming the new Cuban Heavyweight Champion. He follows this feat with a streak of 10 consecutive victories between 1953 and 1955 in Miami Beach, Tampa, Germany, Cuba, Brussels, New York, Bermuda, and West Virginia.
While elsewhere his name was becoming well known internationally with each new fight, in his native Cuba he was acknowledged and treated as a national hero, not only for his pugilistic achievements but also as a celebrity. A radio and television personality, he was an omnipresent media fixture as spokesman in ads for everything from milk to men’s suits, beef steaks, and soft drinks like Malta Hatuey.
El Niño’s most remembered fight, which has become legendary, was his victory against Ezzard Charles (World Heavyweight Champion from June 22, 1949 to July 18, 1951) at the Miami Beach Auditorium on August 11, 1953, winning by unanimous decision. Had the fight taken place earlier, and had it been a title fight, El Niño Valdés would have become the first ever Cuban World Heavyweight Champion. The Ring magazine ranked Valdés as the number one heavyweight contender for both 1953 and 1954.
As early as 1953 the Valdés camp begins to actively seek a championship bout between El Niño and Rocky Marciano (World Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1956). Unable to ever come to an agreement, all attempts fail, negotiations stall, and Marciano decides to fight other opponents, including Ezzard Charles (twice), whom Valdés had previously defeated in 1953.
In 1954 the NBA names Valdés the only logical contender for Rocky Marciano’s World Heavyweight Championship. But after knocking out Archie Moore at Yankee Stadium on September 21, 1955, Marciano suddenly calls it quits, forever thwarting El Niño’s chance at a championship bout. Valdés never gets the opportunity to fight Marciano, who retires undefeated with a legendary record of 49 consecutive victories (43 by knockout), no losses, and no draws.
We will never know the outcome of a bout between Marciano and Valdés. With a record like Marciano’s, it’s logical to assume that he had nothing to fear. Still, Valdés outweighed him, was 5 inches taller, could throw a killer punch, and had a reach of 78” to Rocky’s 68”. What we do know is that, referring to Valdés having knocked out Don Cockell in London in three rounds when it took Rocky nine rounds to knock down the Brit, Marciano is quoted in The New York Times on September 16, 1955 as saying, “I’ll tell you, I never hit anyone so hard as I did Cockell in the body. I walloped him solid a number of times and yet it didn’t seem to bother him. It certainly surprised me that Valdés handled him so easily”
El Niño was huge in England, and he was the terror of British boxers. He was victorious in all of his bouts in London, Brussels, and Germany. He would only fight in white trunks. For his bout with Ezzard Charles he was given black trunks to wear. The lining was white so El Niño wore the shorts inside out. He won the fight. In London, the British Boxing Board of Control had a long standing rule forbidding any fighter to use white trunks. El Niño’s fight with Don Cockell was almost cancelled because of his insistence on wearing white. Eventually a compromise was reached and he wore his white trunks covered with a dark fabric, but keeping a stripe of the original white down each leg. He won that bout also.
That he was able to get as regimented folk as the British to bend their rules was no surprise, because one thing El Niño had plenty of was charisma. He had a winning, disarming smile that opened doors and melted hearts. He was a humble, simple, non-aggressive man, who spoke softly and slowly off the ring, and he had a good heart. These qualities caused the media to nickname him The Gentle Giant. Unfortunately, because of his gentle nature he also lacked the killer instinct in the ring. He was content just to win a fight fair and square. He never went in for the kill, never abused his strength nor tortured an opponent. But he loved the media, and photographs of the time show him always clowning around, whether it was opening his big mouth to show a photographer his tonsillectomy or getting down on his knees à la Al Jolson and singing a song for the press on his last visit to London.
But that occasion proved to be his swan song. When he climbed into the ring for his bout with Brian London in Wembley on December 1, 1959, he could barely see out of his left eye. Still, he won the fight. Upon his return to the United States he was declared unfit to fight again by his doctor. There would be no more fights.
El Niño then retired from boxing and returned to Cuba. By his own account, in an interview with The New York Times published on July 7, 1974, he was summoned into the office of revolutionary assassin Che Guevara, who demanded that he use his fame to spew communist propaganda against the United States on state controlled Cuban television and radio. Valdés; who was grateful to the United States, the country that launched him into international fame; and whose own son had been born in New York, and was therefore an American citizen; flatly refused to badmouth the United States or to serve as a commie tool. Guevara, one of Castro’s most despicable and reviled henchmen, then gave Valdés 24 hours to get out of Cuba or face the consequences of being a traitor to the revolution. El Niño, as had thousands of other Cubans before and after, had everything he owned taken from him by the dictatorship, and he returned to the country of his triumphs, no longer as a celebrity, but as one more impoverished Cuban political refugee with only $76 in his pocket.
Upon his arrival, El Niño found himself penniless, as his earnings from boxing had mostly gone into the embezzling pockets of his manager Bobby Gleason, and the rest into the private coffers of the dictatorship. Having earned his living with his fists since the age of fifteen, he was reduced to odd jobs to try to eke out a living. He worked in construction, as a butcher, and as a porter on the luxury liner Constitution. Diabetic and totally blind in his left eye, he ended up as a bouncer at the Mardi Grass, a topless joint in Manhattan.
Judging from old press photographs, El Niño was married to a very pretty woman named Delia, although I have no idea if she was Cuban or not, or when the marriage took place. They had a son born on the 11th of February 1958. United Press, which reported the birth, refers to him as Giraldo Junior, Giraldo with an i. But in his last interview with The New York Times, published on July 7, 1974, El Niño refers to his son as Johnny, and says he would not encourage his son to pursue a boxing career. It is unknown to me if El Niño’s marriage to Delia lasted, or ended in divorce, or whether they had other children, but several Internet sources indicate that El Niño was living alone when he died at the age of 76 on June 3, 2001.
The story of El Niño Valdés is doubly tragic. It’s both a Cuban tragedy and a pugilistic one. As a Cuban who opposed the dictatorship, he was forced into the crude adversity of political exile. As a boxer, he was Heavyweight Champion in his own land, and he was acknowledged internationally as one of the best heavyweights of his time, only to fade into oblivion and poverty in his later years.
Boxing, relentless and unforgiving in its cruelty, has taken a toll on Cuban boxers. The most famous Cuban fighter of all time, Kid Chocolate, the first Cuban ever to win a world title, who uttered the self-aggrandizing “¡El boxeo soy yo!” (“I am boxing!”) decades before we heard Norma Desmond say “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small!”, ended up a penniless, syphilitic has been, ostracized by the dictatorship, and denied proper medical care in life, only to be proclaimed a hero of the revolution in death. His good friend, Eladio Valdés, known in the United States as “Black Bill”, blinded by an opponent, committed suicide in his New York apartment in April of 1933. Douglas Vaillant also took his own life. He hung himself in Sewell Park in Miami, where he worked as a trainer. Kid Gavilán ended up a pauper in an assisted living facility in Hialeah, although one can’t really blame boxing for Gavilán’s downfall. Gavilán was always his own worst enemy. Benny Paret died after being beaten to a pulp by Emile Griffith.
Perhaps because most boxers are intellectually challenged, they are unable to carve out a financially secure future for themselves. Regardless of the big money they may have made while their careers were on the upswing, they are more often than not the victims of unscrupulous managers and handlers, and in some cases the pawns of organized crime.
The story of El Niño Valdés does not have a happy ending, although with typical good cheer, he himself claimed he had no regrets about his boxing career, except for the fact that he never got the chance to go one on one with Marciano for the World Heavyweight crown. Still, he didn’t do too badly. He ended his professional career with a record of 48 victories, 18 losses, and 3 draws.
El Niño is no longer, but his legend endures, immortalized in the poem Igual que el Niño Valdés (Just Like El Niño Valdés), written for him by Arturo Liendo and masterfully brought to life by Luis Carbonell in a famous recording. El Niño is no longer, but I, who had not yet been born when he already reigned supreme as the Cuban Heavyweight Champion, today sit in front of a computer and write about him. El Niño is no longer, but he is alive and well on the Internet. El Niño is no longer, but his pugilistic legacy endures in black and white on YouTube. El Niño is no longer, but his essence is staring right back at us in those old photographs. It’s there in his omnipresent, mischievous smile.
El Niño! The Kid! The Gentle Giant! The names suited him to a T. Seven decades have passed since he first burst into the scene, and that smile has not lost its charm. It still captivates.
RAFAEL REMÓN
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