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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, May 17, 2002

Pro game has been kinder

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Two years ago they took on the world together as members of the U.S. Olympic Boxing Team.

Now, as emerging professionals, they chase their pieces of it — and their fortunes — one championship belt at a time as they put Olympic disappointments behind them.

"Everybody has gone their own way," said Waipahu's Brian Viloria, the flyweight division representative in Sydney. "But we all still talk to each other. We still root for each other. We still communicate with each other and keep track of how everybody is doing and what's happening."

The e-mails and phone calls have mostly been happy ones, the headlines positive ones as the victories have piled up for this far-flung group. One that has, on a whole, gotten off to a series of promising starts in professional careers.

Just how promising will be on display tonight at 7:30 at the Blaisdell Center arena where Viloria returns home in one eight-round main event and teammate Jose Navarro appears in a companion junior bantamweight eight-rounder.

Navarro, at 10-0 (4 KOs), is the early pace-setter with the most victories among the Olympians, 10 of the 12 of whom remain unbeaten.

Five of them, Navarro, middleweight Jermaine Taylor (9-0), junior welterweight Ricardo Williams Jr., 7-0, bantamweight Clarence Vinson, 7-0 and Viloria (6-0, 4 KOs) operate out of the same DiBella Entertainment stable, being groomed for championship opportunities.

Though they all have their own pace and timetables, you get the feeling there is a race afoot here. That the competition among them is in seeing not only who can be the first to win a world title — but go the longest without losing.

"We're always asking each other about how their fights went," Viloria said. "We got to be pretty close as a team training for Sydney and we still root for each other. We keep track of how everybody is doing and how their last fight went."

In the pros, individually and as a group, they seek to capture the championships that eluded them in the Olympics. They seek to write a lucrative and happy ending to goals unfulfilled in Sydney.

For it was in Sydney where, despite considerable potential, the U.S. was left without a gold medal for the first time since the 1948 Olympics in London.

Viloria lost a controversial second-round bout to the eventual gold medal winner, Brahim Asloum of France, when many of his body blows went unscored. Now, he could be the valedictorian for the group.

"It is a different game now (in the pros)," Viloria says. "And a better chance for a different ending."