Soon the two fearsome rivals would be on the dance floor, dancing next to each other, sometimes even with each other, matching moves and grins as the crowd watched in awe.
Few guys who so battered each other — especially when the first of their two fights also was steeped in controversy — ever forged such a loving, supportive friendship afterwards.
The two traveled England together making appearances. They’d be together in Las Vegas, they toured Arguello’s native Nicaragua three times and several years ago even appeared together in nearby Wilmington.
But they were at their best in Graziano’s lounge, Pryor said:
“Alexis was a good dancer and I thought I could dance a little, too, and we just let our hair down — until this year.
“I was out there on the middle of the floor dancing by myself and all I could think is, ‘My friend is gone ... My ... friend ... is ... gone.’ ”
Exactly one year ago yesterday — July 1, 2009 — Arguello, the 57-year-old mayor of Managua, Nicaragua, allegedly committed suicide.
Pryor, his wife Frankie, many in Arguello’s family and others who knew the three-time world champ don’t believe he killed himself. They think he was murdered.
Pryor truly misses his old friend and you saw that three weeks ago at the hall-of-fame banquet the night after Graziano’s. In front of a convention center crowd in Syracuse, the beloved Pryor was called to the podium as the big screen behind the stage showed him stopping Antonio Cervantes to win the junior welterweight crown in 1980.
“Yes, that’s good, but I would like to remember my friend Alexis Arguello tonight,” Pryor said before his voice faltered and he returned to his seat, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Never in my life did I meet a guy whose personality took me out of my head,” Pryor said quietly as he sat in his Mount Airy apartment the other day. “Everybody else I fought, I had a little conflict with and we couldn’t be friends. But he really cared for me and I really, really loved him.”
And that’s why he refuses to believe the suicide ruling:
“There’s not enough money in the world could make me believe that. If you’re going to shoot yourself, you don’t do it in the chest. That’s hard to turn the gun around like that.”
Frankie agreed: “If you saw the autopsy photos you’d understand. He was all beat up. There were lots of bruises all over his body. As soon as I heard, I thought it was the stupid Sandinistas.
“I mean if you’d gone through all the crap in the past like he did, why now? He had a 6-month-old son. His life had come around.
“Just like Aaron’s.”
In a good place
The uninitiated might think otherwise. The small, third-floor apartment he and Frankie share with their cat is a far cry from his big mansion — “three living rooms,” Pryor said — in Miami in the 1980s.
The millions he made in fight purses are mostly gone and that indomitable figure — “The Hawk” with his menacing, pointed-fist pose just before the opening bell — now comes with two plates in his neck to combat a degenerative nerve disorder and a surgically repaired left eye that still leaves him seeing a double image.
“This is a real good time in my life,” the 54-year-old Pryor said. “I couldn’t be happier. I’m in the Hall of Fame. I’m a minister now, I’m with a woman I love ... and I’m clean. I’m excited to be the person I am today.”
The walls around him were filled with photos of title fights, him clowning as a teen with his idol Muhammad Ali and images of him that were in Sports Illustrated. A cabinet nearby held his two title belts. The originals were lost during his downward spiral through drugs and violence, but the replacements were provided by his friend, Wilmington banker Ken Hawk, who long ago gave him his nickname, too.
“Now I finally have someone to share all this with,” Pryor said. “In Miami I didn’t. Miami’s where I found (crack cocaine) and nearly killed myself. That’s where they kidnapped me and shot me. Life is a learning lesson ... and I learned a lot there.”
It was the same for Arguello.
As it turns out, the two men who seemed so different — Arguello from Central America, Pryor from Cincinnati — had much in common. Both grew up in troubled families and extreme poverty and both found an escape through boxing.
Arguello — the noble warrior with the movie star looks — became a three-time world champ, winning crowns as a featherweight, junior lightweight and lightweight.
Pryor — a frenetic whirlwind in the ring — would win 204 of 220 amateur bouts and all but one of the 40 pro fights in his career.
“After I won my title I tried to get Sugar Ray Leonard in the ring with me, Tommy Hearns (Pryor had beaten him for the National Golden Gloves title), a lot of guys, but nobody would fight me,” Pryor said. “Nobody except Alexis. He said, ‘I’ll shut this guy up.’ ”
‘Thrilla’ in miniature
In the weeks leading up to the November 1982 fight, Arguello was embraced by Miami, while Pryor was cast, as he aptly puts it, as “the bad guy.”
Miami’s Cuban population felt a kinship with Arguello, who — just as they had fled Castro — had come to Miami to live after the Sandinistas took his homes and money and killed his brother.
A savvy ring tactician trying to become the first man to win crowns at four weights, Arguello was made the 12-5 favorite over the unbeaten champ.
Just before the fight, the Miami night came alive with fireworks overhead and loud salsa music filling the old stadium. But that was nothing but a warm-up act for Round 1 when Pryor and Arguello threw an unheard of 238 punches.
“It was like a miniature of the Thrilla in Manila,” said promoter Bob Arum.
With the crowd roaring nonstop, the fighters rocked each other round after round after round. Though behind on two scorecards in the 13th, Arguello looked about to turn the tide when he landed a huge right hand that snapped Pryor’s head straight back.
Although that punch had knocked out so many other Arguello rivals, Pryor — shaken for a moment — came surging back.
It was between rounds when the controversy developed. That’s when Pryor’s trainer, Panama Lewis, asked the cut man to hand him the other water bottle: “The one I mixed.”
Pryor took a swig, came roaring out in the 14th, caught Arguello in a brutal assault of 20 unanswered punches and the Nicaraguan finally crumpled to the canvas, where he lay before a hushed stadium for several minutes.
The “other bottle” debate raged afterward because the fight commission failed to take urine samples. Pryor still claims there was nothing in the bottle and points to his 30 knockouts in 31 previous fights — and his total destruction of Arguello in a Las Vegas rematch 10 months later — as proof he needed nothing extra.
But while the two men both found fame and fortune that night in South Florida — and both ended up living there — the “Miami Vice” lifestyle of those days nearly did them in.
They lost homes, wives, fortunes, and for a while, their reputations. Pryor ended up shot in the hand when drug guys kidnapped him. And once he limped back home to Cincinnati, the slide to oblivion got worse until he was down to 100 pounds and living on the street.
He finally ended up in rehab, where he met Frankie Wagner.
“She had no idea who I was or that I was a boxer or anything,” Pryor said. “She liked me not because I was a champion or had money and that meant everything.”
They’ve been together 20 years, they eventually married and, as Carl Ballachino — Pryor’s longtime friend and former sparring partner who now runs Reiber Cleaners in Kettering — puts it: “She’s the best thing that ever happened to him.”
Sharing his story
Ali to Arguello, Hawk to Ballachino, people are drawn to Pryor.
That’s the case with Eric Mangini, too.
When the Cleveland Browns coach was with the New York Jets, he befriended Pryor and had him speak to his team before two games. The latter was when the Jets came to play the Cincinnati Bengals three years ago.
“He had been showing the team fight videos all year and before the game, as he was showing them Aaron’s fight with Alexis, he snuck Aaron into the back of the room,” Frankie said. “When the fight gets done, you hear Aaron scream, ‘What time is it?’ The guys went crazy, yelling ‘Hawk Time!... Hawk Time!’
“Aaron spoke to them at the team meeting, in the locker room and on the field. It was hysterical. You couldn’t even see Aaron with all those big guys crowded around him.”
Pryor remembers urging the Jets on and how they all rubbed him on the head for luck as they took the field. But he also remembers feeling uncomfortable:
“I like the Bengals. They’re my hometown, but, truthfully, they never invited me to one of their games.”
Maybe they haven’t put out the red carpet, but a lot of other folks have. The England tour has become a semiannual event. He appears every year in Washington, D.C., and did an event in Las Vegas with Mike Tyson a few months back.
And there were the Nicaraguan trips, including one for two weeks to help Arguello — duped by the Sandinistas to join their party — run for office.
“He took us to the Sandinista headquarters and they had machine guns on us and they pushed Alexis around and told him what to do,” Frankie said. “I said, ‘Alexis, where the hell have you taken us?’ ”
She and Aaron won’t be asking that question tonight, July 2, when — as part of the “Celebration of Punchers and Painters,” an exhibit of the boxing photos, posters, oral fight stories and artwork at the Color of Energy Gallery in the Oregon District — they appear for “A Night With Aaron Pryor.”
It goes from 7 to 9 p.m. and is free to the public.
And what might Pryor— who fought here four times as a pro, is now a deacon at the New Friendship Baptist Church in Avondale and helps train his son Aaron Jr., a former Edison Community College basketball player — have to say?
“There’s one thing I like to share with people,” he said. “I’ve proved that even though you mess up in life, you can still get it back right.”
And when you see that, it impresses you even more than that fight in the Orange Bowl or those nights with his old pal on the Graziano dance floor.
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