WHEN Cuban amateur star Robeisy Ramirez lost the first fight of his professional career, nobody told him it was okay, nobody said, “It happens,” and nobody reminded him that it had happened to the best of them.
What he heard instead were phrases like “disaster” and “fraud” and “hype job”, as well as suggestions that he had either left it too late to turn pro or that the disparity between the amateur game and the pro game had never been greater. Nobody mentioned Henry Armstrong. Nobody mentioned Bernard Hopkins. Nobody thought about the past.