My Global Hustle

They say you can’t go home again, but Iran Barkley said he had little choice.

“The boxing money, that’s all gone man, all gone,” said Barkley, a former world champion who is back in the South Bronx, where he was reared in public housing and learned how to fight.

Barkley said he was no richer now, at 46, than when he left the Patterson Houses as a 19-year-old to do battle with some of boxing’s biggest names.

Once a member of the sport’s upper echelon, he has returned to his old neighborhood, where drug dealers and stray cats prowl to a steady soundtrack of emergency sirens. But to those familiar with everything he accomplished in the ring, including two improbable victories over Thomas Hearns and three world titles, Barkley remains boxing royalty.

“You know, I ran this whole neighborhood back in the ’70s,” Barkley said as he basked for a moment in the cold February sunshine. “I was in the Black Spades, a real crazy street gang. They didn’t want to let me go.”

As he spoke, a New York City bus came to an unscheduled stop just beyond the curb where he was standing. The doors opened. “Yo, champ, how’s it going,” the driver shouted. “You need a lift?”

Barkley is in need of a financial lift. After earning millions of dollars during a 19-year boxing career, he said he was having trouble paying the rent. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment in public housing and scrapes together what little income he can by training young fighters and working part time in a candy shop.

He said his financial woes resulted from making bad investments and from never earning top dollar in the ring.

But some of the people who did business with him tell another story. “Iran made a lot of money in the ring, millions of dollars, and he gambled it all away,” said the promoter Bob Arum, who handled many of Barkley’s biggest fights.

“Iran never made Ray Leonard or Tommy Hearns-type money, but we did put him in a number of big-money fights,” Arum said. “He just kept giving all of it back to the casinos, and that’s the real story. We tried to stop him, but there was just no talking to Iran at that time.”

Barkley disputed Arum’s account. “He’s just flipping the script, just trying to make me look bad because I beat his boy Tommy Hearns twice,” he said. “And that cost him a lot of money.”

He acknowledged that he gambled during his time in Las Vegas, where he lived and trained from 1988 to 1998. “But only as a form of rest and relaxation,” he said. “And the most I ever lost at a casino was about $5,000.”

John Reetz, who managed Barkley from 1987-90, said: “My recollection of Iran would be a combination of things. He liked to gamble, but he did also make some bad investments, which didn’t help.”

Barkley said he bought a condominium in Hackensack, N.J., a car wash in Yonkers and a tenement building on Boston Road in the Bronx. Several of his South Bronx neighbors said he squandered money by helping old friends pay their rent.

Barkley began fighting as a 126-pounder with a lot of potential but no name recognition. His older sister Yvonne, one of the first professional female boxers, introduced him to the sport when he was 13, taking him to the St. Mary’s Recreation Center in the Bronx.

There, he met David Vasquez, a professional fighter who trained amateurs.

“I worked with hundreds of young boxers from this area,” said Vasquez, who also lives in the South Bronx. “There was no one better than Iran, no one who threw punches with such ferocity and power. He was determined to become a champion.”

In 1988, Barkley became the World Boxing Council middleweight champion with a stunning third-round knockout of Hearns, a fight labeled “Upset of the Year” by The Ring magazine. The next year, he lost a split decision to Roberto Durán, a 12-round slugfest in which Durán knocked down Barkley in the 11th round. It was proclaimed “Fight of the Year” by the same magazine.

That night, Barkley received a $550,000 purse. Durán, the challenger, received $225,000. But by defeating Barkley, Durán set himself up for a $7.5 million payday for his third bout against Leonard, who received $12.5 million. Leonard won the fight.

“I never had that $5 million payday to get me over the hump,” Barkley said. “So I never had the kind of real money to keep up my mortgage payments and to keep my businesses going.”

The boxing historian Bert Sugar said Barkley did not earn top paydays because he fought at a time when the spotlight belonged to Durán, Hearns, Leonard and Marvin Hagler.

“Iran happened to fight in an era with four great fighters, and he wasn’t one of them,” Sugar said. “In boxing, it’s all about image, about selling a product. Iran was a good, hard-hat, dutiful fighter, but he wasn’t a household name like those other guys. He didn’t generate excitement, and he didn’t put people in seats like they did.”

Still, Barkley’s name continued to appear on boxing marquees. He fought Michael Nunn in August 1989 for the International Boxing Federation middleweight title, losing by a close majority decision. In August 1990, Barkley lost to Nigel Benn in a World Boxing Association middleweight title fight that ended after Benn knocked down Barkley three times in the first round.

Hours before Barkley stepped into the ring against Benn in Las Vegas, he received a double dose of heart-wrenching news. He learned that his father, Frank Barkley Sr., an Army veteran who was battling cancer, and his brother, Frank Jr., who had AIDS, had died days apart. (Barkley said he was given his first name by his father, who had performed military duty in Iran.)

By 1992, Barkley had moved up to the supermiddleweight division, where he defeated Darrin Van Horn for the I.B.F. championship.

In the living room of his apartment — the same place he shared with his parents and seven siblings when he said he was running with the Black Spades — hangs a portrait of him being raised onto the shoulders of his handlers after his second-round knockout of Van Horn.

“They called me the blade,” Barkley said, flashing a quick smile, “because I cut up a lot of guys in the ring.”

After dropping Van Horn, Barkley met Hearns again in March 1992, this time for the W.B.A. light heavyweight title. In a nasty, 12-round brawl, he defeated Hearns again. Barkley earned $500,000 for that fight; Hearns received $1.2 million.

“I had already beaten Hearns once, and here he is making twice as much money as me,” Barkley said. “But money couldn’t buy Tommy a victory, and until this day, he can’t live with the fact that I beat him twice, fair and square, with no politics involved.”

Hearns, who lives in Detroit, did not return telephone calls seeking comment for this article.

Barkley was 39 when his career ended in 1999. He finished with a record of 43-19-1, including 28 knockouts.

Despite his financial woes, he said, the lowest point of his life came when his mother, Georgia, died in 2000. “She was my rock, my glue,” he said. “Things kind of fell apart from there.”

He has divorced twice, and he has four children who live in Manhattan and Yonkers. He said he has “a good relationship” with them, the youngest of whom are 14 and 12. He said he did the best he could to help support them.

“Things are a lot tougher now, but what’s done is done,” Barkley said. “I’m not looking back, I’m looking ahead.”

The sun began to dip behind the Patterson Houses, and Barkley, pulling a wool cap over his ears, walked back to his apartment. Along the way, he stopped to admire a faded mural on the back of his building. The mural, painted in 1988 by neighbors, depicts him in his heyday.

“This was made after I beat Hearns the first time,” said Barkley, flashing another smile. “Don’t matter that it’s fading now, because everyone knows that was really me back then.”

Filed under: Cool Articles, Money Matters by !YG

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