"At one point the quiet house in Catskill suffered an invasion that no one who was there at the time will ever forget. Wilfred Benitez came to train in Catskill. Benitez was managed by D'matos closest friend, Jim Jacobs, the first world champion Jacobs would handle. The Puerto Rican native was a boxing prodigy. He won the first world title at the age of 17 , making him the youngest professional champion in history. (Even Mike Tyson, who would go on to become the youngest heavyweight champion ever, was still an amateur when he was 17 years old). Benitez would go on to win two more titles in his career, making him one of a handful of men to hold onto a championship in three different weight divisions. He did it all on natural talent, because his training habits and overall discipline were severly lacking. Benitez had the reputaton in boxing circles of being a 'head case', a wacky, strutting, macho kid not playing with a full deck.
He began his career at age 14, managed by his father, Gregorio, who was heavily into horses and gamblin. Within a few years, predictably, Gregorio was in debt and forced to sell his sons contract to raise cash. Teddy Brenner, the macthmaker at the old Eastern Parkway Arena in Brooklyn who started out Floyd Patterson, put Gregorio together with Jim Jacobs, who he knew had the money. Financially, it was a steal. Jacobs grabbed Benitez contract for $75 thousand. Guided by Jacobs, the fighter would earn several million dollars over the next few years, and Jacobs cut earned back his investment many times over. But handling Wilfred Benitez took its tol in aggravation, since the father insisted that he remain invovled in his sons career as the boys trainer. Father and son would prove to be their own worst enemies. Neither knew how to handle their new found wealth, perhaps thinking those million dollar purses would pour in forever. Evenually, a victim of his own prolifigate ways and milked by his fathers continued gambling, Benitez would burn out while still in his twenties, his career over and with virtually all his money gone.
When he and his entourage arrived in Catskill he was at the peak of his fighting powers preparing to challenge Carlos Palomino for the welterweight title. It was Jacobs hope that the two men might gain some insight by training under the watchful eye of Cus.
Apparently unfamiliar or unconcerned with the conventions of civilised society, the puerto ricans turned things upside down at the house. One member of the group would wake up between four and five every morning and begin to practise martial arts, complete with loud screams and whoops waking everybody up. He also had the charming habit of blowing snot from his nose right onto the floor, and leaving it there.
Wilfred himself would spit on the floor around his bed. He would also gorge himself on his favourite diet of chicken, beans and rice to the point where he would sometimes throw up, or get stomach cramps and shyt all over the toilet, leaving his mess unflushed until someone would discover it the next morning.
Benitez also began a hot pursuit of a 13 year old girl in town, until Cus put halt to it by explaining that although this might be acceptbale behaviour in the islands, in a smll country town it could land you in jail for statutory rape, or perhaps provoke the girls family to come after you with shotguns.
At dinnertime the Benitez entourage did not bother with untensils: they used their hands for everything. When the other boys in the house complained about this behaviour that was turning the place into shambles, Cus tried to explain to them that these people came from a different culture. As Cus put it, all these people knew was how to cut sugar cane all day and screw their women at night.
However the final straw came one day when Camille was trying to clean up. She had noticed that her expensive, monogrammed towels had been disappearing. While cleaning Wilfreds room, she found a pile of them, along with a stench. When she examined more closely, she was repulsed. It seems that Wilfred had been using them to wipe his rear end after bowel movements, and then just dumped his excrement covered towels in his room. Camille was enraged, and it was not long before Benitez and his merry men were sent packing.
Benitez life was full of all kinds of fukkery. He was truly a boxing savant
