Boxer Ricardo Mayorga has a media-savvy schtick that has led Reed Albergotti to call him The Boxer Who Won't Quit:
After one grueling workout last month in Florida, he toweled off and walked outside the gym. His coach handed him some fresh fruit to eat for recovery and an assistant produced a lighter. Soon Mr. Mayorga was taking a deep drag from a Marlboro, looking relieved and relaxed. “I’ve been smoking since I was 13,” he said. “It seems to be working for me, so why stop?”Mr. Mayorga’s assistant, Anthony Gonzalez, says that when the boxer isn’t training, he smokes as many as three packs, or 60 cigarettes, a day.
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As he ascended in boxing, Mr. Mayorga says he originally tried to hide his smoking habit for fear that promoters would scold him. After beating Mr. Lewis in 2002, Mr. Mayorga was sitting in the training room with his coach and smoking a cigarette when Alan Hopper, a publicist for promoter Don King, walked in. His coach frantically grabbed the cigarette and attempted to put it out, but instead of lecturing the fighter, Mr. Hopper told him to light up another one and found him a bottle of beer to take to the press conference. When Mr. Mayorga started taking questions from the media while drinking and smoking, an image was born.