The Cuban boxer Teófilo Stevenson has died.

During the 1970's, comparisons between native Louisville son Muhammad Ali and Cuba's Teófilo Stevenson were many, usually leading to a discussion of how the detested Commies sent professional athletes to compete in the (allegedly) pure amateur Olympics. As always, the topic was not sports, amateur or professional, but money -- always green.

Boxer Teofilo Stevenson's loyalty to Cuba's revolution, by Sarah Rainsford (BBC)

He was Cuba's greatest boxer, once its most famous figure after Fidel Castro, and huge numbers of people had come to remember him - fellow Olympic champions, many in their tracksuits, jostled alongside everyone else.

Stevenson himself perhaps grasped the essence of truly professional sports better than the foreigners who practiced it.

Teófilo Stevenson, Cuban Boxing Great, Dies at 60, by Richard Goldstein (NYT)

 ... “No, I will not leave my country for one million dollars or for much more than that,” Stevenson was quoted as saying by Sports Illustrated in 1974 in an article headlined “He’d Rather Be Red Than Rich.”

“What is a million dollars,” he added, “against eight million Cubans who love me?” ...

... Stevenson, whose boxing career was subsidized by the Cuban government, remained loyal to Castro, but his motivation in deciding against turning pro in the United States by defecting may have been more nuanced than he let on at the time.

“I didn’t need the money because it was going to mess up my life,” he told The Tribune in 2003. “For professional boxers, the money is a trap. You make a lot of money, but how many boxers in history do we know that died poor? The money always goes into other people’s hands.”