In the Red Corner

John Duncan, sports correspondent with the Guardian, spent a year negotiating with Cuban bureaucracy in an attempt to arrange a professional fight, between Tyson and Savon, in Cuba, the last bastion of Communism, where professional boxing is illegal.

---

John Duncan, sports correspondent with the "Guardian", needs a change: he leaves his job and moves to Havana, with a deal from Frank Warren to arrange a fight between Mike Tyson and Cuban double Olympic champion Felix Savon, the world's two greatest living heavyweights. However, professional boxing is illegal in Cuba, Castro having banned it in 1961, and Felix Savon had already turned down the $25 million purse offered by Don King to fight Tyson. So John Duncan spent a year negotiating with Cuban bureaucracy in an attempt to pull off the impossible, and arrange a professional fight in the last bastion of Communism, where money does not buy everything. His account of a year spent in the maelstrom of Havana's heat and bureacracy is intercut with portraits of Cuba's most famous boxing legends including Teofilo Stevenson, Benny "Kid" Paret, Black Bill, Angel Espinosa and Kid Chocolate. This work is a reflection on the noble and often dirty art of boxing, both past and present.