Panama Lewis

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Carlos "Panama" Lewis is a well-known and highly controversial boxing trainer who achieved his greatest notoriety in the 1980s.

Lewis was a trainer for several highly-rated boxers in the early 1980s, the most noted of which was light-welterweight champion Aaron Pryor.

Lewis is able to continue to work as a trainer overseas, with a stable of fighters that included sometime heavyweight contender Frans Botha. He resurfaced in the news in the United States in 2002, when Mike Tyson brought him in as an advisor for his title fight with Lennox Lewis. He now trains heavyweight contender Sultan Ibragimov.

Lewis's most shameful act came on June 16th 1983 - on the undercard of the Roberto Duran v Davey Moore championship fight, when training Luis Resto in a bout he was favoured to lose against undefeated prospect Billy Collins Jr. Prior to the bout, Lewis removed the horsehair padding from Resto's gloves, allowing him to inflict grotesque facial damage to Collins en route to a 10-round points decision victory. Sensing foul play, Collins' trainer and father Billy Collins Sr. felt Resto's gloves at the end of the bout and immediately alerted the New York State Athletic Commission. As a result of this bout, in October 1986, Resto was convicted of assault, conspiracy, and criminal possession of a deadly weapon (his fists). He served 21/2 years of a three-year sentence. The tragic postscript to this episode is that Billy Collins Jr, having sustained such serious eye damage in the bout never fought again. He died in March 1984 when his car slammed into a concrete embankment. His father, Billy Collins Sr, believes this to have been a successful suicide attempt after his son fell into depression.

[edit] References

KO Magazine, February 1987