Within a few years, de Jesús was so ill that his sentence was commuted on the condition that he remain in an AIDS clinic for treatment. “The doctors tell me that I have anywhere from one to four years to live,” de Jesús said in a television interview in February 1989, “but I hope God will support me longer.” There would be no reprieve for the magnificent lightweight whose troubles—combined with his losses to Durán —would permanently overshadow his career. Three months later, he was dead.
A few weeks before he died, however, an ailing de Jesús received a visit from Roberto Durán, whose empathy brought him to Puerto Rico from hundreds of miles away. Durán met his ex–rival for the fourth and final time in a weathered milk factory converted into a makeshift sickbay.
During the late-1980s the growing AIDS epidemic sparked a national panic. Before that, however, before the number of AIDS deaths spiked from hundreds in 1982 to more than fourteen thousand in 1989, AIDS was virtually a taboo subject. It took the death of Rock Hudson, ex-Hollywood leading man, to bring sharper national focus to the AIDS crisis. Best known for his roles in Douglas Sirk melodramas and Doris Day comedies in the 1950s and ’60s, Hudson was the first recognizable face of a mystifying disease too often thought of as the bane of the underclass. Hudson, rich, famous, and preserved forever on celluloid as a handsome young man, died in 1985. By the late 1980s ACT UP, playwright Larry Kramer, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Aids Memorial Quilt (unfurled in front of the White House in 1988) raised awareness of an illness that had a near-apocalyptic air about it. Even then, however, AIDS victims suffered discrimination and the process by which the disease spread was still shrouded in ignorance. Under any circumstances, it seemed, AIDS was something to fear with almost pathological intensity. But Durán immediately moved in to embrace de Jesús. “When I see him there so thin,” Durán told Christian Giudice, “my tears run out because he used to be . . . a muscular guy. I start crying and I hug him, and I kiss him and I tell my daughter to kiss him.”
This act of compassion was captured in a photograph that was distributed worldwide by the Associated Press. In stark black and white, it reveals two warring selves, now achieving another kind of glory, an acknowledgment of human frailty and the bonds between us all, a haunting memento mori.
Right on for the Darkness
ON AARON PRYOR, 1955–2016
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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From the beginning, Aaron Pryor, who died on October 9, 2016, was at odds with the world. Or, perhaps, the world was at odds with him. One of the most exciting fighters during an era when action was a prerequisite for fame, Pryor matched his unbridled style in the ring with an apocalyptic personal life that kept him in boldface for over a decade.
Pryor was an at-risk youth before the term came into vogue. Dysfunction was in his DNA. He was born—out of wedlock—in 1955 in Cincinnati to an alcoholic mother whose moodiness could lead to impromptu gunplay. Sarah Pryor, née Shellery, who gave birth to seven children by five different fathers, occasionally whipped out the nickel-plated hardware when some of her brood became unruly. Years later, she wound up shooting her husband five times in the kind of supercharged domestic dispute in which the Pryor clan excelled.
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Pryor had a family tree whose branches were gnarled by tragedy and whose roots were blood-soaked. One of his brothers, Lorenzo, was a career criminal who escaped from Cincinnati County Jail and eventually wound up doing hard time for an armed robbery conviction in Ohio. Another brother, David, became a transsexual hooker, while his half-brother was shot and paralyzed by his father. His sister, Catherine, stabbed her lover to death. As if to solidify the epigenetics involved in the Pryor family—and to concretize the symbolism of the phrase “vicious cycle”—Sarah Pryor had seen her own mother shot and murdered by a boyfriend when Sarah was a child.
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As an eight-year-old already at sea in chaotic surroundings, Pryor was molested by a minister. Shame was never far beneath the surface of a man who would eventually earn millions of dollars and worldwide fame as one of the most exciting fighters of his era. On the streets of Mount Auburn and Avalon—where race riots in 1967 and 1968 left bloodstains caked on the sidewalks—Pryor was left to his own devices in a time and place where social services barely existed. As a young boy, he was virtually homeless for years, couch surfing when he could, sleeping in doorways or under awnings whenever his mother locked him out of the house. He was an Over-the-Rhine dead-end kid before finding refuge in a boxing gym as a teenager.
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After losing a decision to Howard Davis Jr., in an Olympic trials box-off in 1976, Pryor returned to Cincinnati at loose ends. That same year, he made his debut, as a late substitute, and earned a payday of $400 against an ex-kickboxer. By contrast, Davis Jr., had a contract from CBS in hand worth nearly $300,000 before he had ever stepped into a pro ring. The TV gold rush had begun, and Pryor had no chance to stake a claim. Soon Pryor became the hired help—as a sparring partner—for the stars who had left him behind: Davis and Sugar Ray Leonard.
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Not long after signing Pryor to an exclusive deal, Madison Square Garden—in those days one of the top promotional firms on the East Coast—called a press conference to announce that “The Hawk,” then a lightweight, could not get a meaningful fight. So in 1980 Pryor turned to the Robin Hood of prizefighting, Harold Smith, for help. Smith, with money embezzled from Wells Fargo, managed to lure WBA super-welterweight champion Antonio Cervantes to Cincinnati, where Pryor rebounded from an early knockdown to overwhelm and eventually stop the defending champion, who had as many successful title defenses under his belt as Pryor had fights.
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Like Leon Spinks, the ditzy man-child sent careening through short-lived fame, Pryor often received press coverage that bordered on mockery. It was Spinks who became the target of talk-show hosts and a Richard Pryor skit, but Pryor was no less susceptible to lampooning than “Neon” Leon. His pre–hip-hop Kangols, Cazals, and Day-Glo tracksuits were ready-made for ridicule. Malapropisms popped out of his mouth like Mentos. The bad press he received, he said, was due to “misrepresentation of my personality.” Later, he removed the gold cap from one of his front teeth, began wearing suits in public, and even toted a briefcase from one press junket to another.
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What made Pryor appealing was a fierce ring style seemingly at one with a personal outlook that bordered on madness. Pryor scored five consecutive stoppages in defense of his junior welterweight title and in the process astonished viewers with his frenzied performances. For Pryor, being knocked down often meant popping right back up to charge at his opponent before the referee could issue the mandatory eight-count. Gaetan Hart, Lennox Blackmoore, Dujuan Johnson, Miguel Montilla, Akio Kameda—all were worn down by Pryor and his cyclone attack.
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As much chaos as Pryor surrounded himself with between fights—he made headlines in 1980 for being shot by his then-girlfriend Theresa Adams—in the ring, everything was a strange kind of zen. “Controversy is still going to come, because that is my style and some people still don't like me,” Pryor once told KO Magazine. “I don't care, they just want to see me get beat. I