Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Boxer has traveled the long road

IT has been a long road though one quickly traveled, as if a lifetime of successes and despair needed to be experienced within a single decade.

The peaks ... the valleys ... Kelcie Banks has felt the extremes, with the rough times leaving an indelible mark while failing to damage his overall psyche.

He talks slower now than he did when he was America's prized amateur boxer. His words are sometimes muffled. His left eye, injured when he was thumbed during a bout, has improved though it once looked askance and led to his retirement as an active fighter.

Yet he prefers to see the positives. If he couldn't win an Olympic gold medal or win five world championships as a professional as he eagerly predicted he would, then maybe his 9-year-old protege someday will.

"I don't look back," Banks said this week. "I never feel sorry. I've never quit."

He has his admirable side even if many sports fans were put off by his pompousness in the months and days that preceded the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

"I know I offended a lot of people," he said. "But that's my personality. All I had was my name. I felt I had to promote myself."

So he made predictions that, unfortunately for him, didn't come to pass. He failed to medal at Seoul and his pro career careened wildly until he was forced from the ring with a 22-5-2 record that includes no world titles.

"I was past my prime too early," Banks said, only slightly hinting at the remorse he certainly must have felt.

'88 too late

Though he was only 19 years old, Banks thought he could make the 1984 U.S. Olympic team. But he lost in the Box-Off semifinals, and while that indirectly led to an extended reign as the country's most decorated amateur, it kept him off the sport's fast track.

"By '86 I was more than ready to turn pro but here came some rich people who told me not to do it," he said. "They said 'Do this' and 'Do that' so I stayed amateur and concentrated on making the '88 Olympic team. But by then, the Olympics were more these other peoples' goals than mine.

"If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have waited."

The wait, however, had its up side. By the time he earned a position on the 1988 U.S. Olympic team -- with a disputed win over Eddie Hopson during the Box-Offs in Las Vegas -- Banks had a roomful of trophies and awards. In 546 amateur fights, many against international competition, he won 460 times. Competing at 125 pounds, he was a two-time U.S. national champion and the gold medalist at the 1986 Pan American Games.

Talkative and outspoken, he generated an inordinate amount of attention, attention that backfired when he was quickly beaten in Seoul.

And what happened to the money people who had been stringing him along?

"Oh, they were gone after that," Banks said. "When you lose, it's your fault. 'You're the one in the ring, not me' is what they more or less say when they're looking to place the blame."

Damaged goods

He had no foundation, no financial support and no manager as he turned pro following Seoul. After a few months and a few nondescript fights, he gravitated to Las Vegas, where he still lives.

"My spirituality has always helped me," Banks said. "Material things are irrelevant. I don't regret how things went in the pros. I didn't have the right management and I didn't make much money, but that's the way it goes."

Rather than second-guess his career, he remains philosophic about it.

"I could have won the five world titles," he said. "It would have been a cakewalk if everything had gone right. But basically, you can't worry about stuff like that. Life goes on. Nobody was looking out for me then."

Hardly anyone has ever looked out for Kelcie Banks.

A native of Mississippi who grew up in Chicago, he was close to his grandmother but very independent even as his career began to blossom.

"I went more places and won more things than any amateur, not only then but today," he said. "I started from scratch. I traveled two and a half years by myself as an amateur, including one time I remember flying to a tournament on Christmas Day."

Eventually the wear and tear within the ring began to take its inevitable toll. Banks could hit but he also would get hit, and as he got older and perhaps more desperate, he was receiving more than he was delivering.

He was also handicapped by what was later diagnosed as a weak muscle near his left eye, which was hurt in a 1991 fight in San Bernardino, Calif., against Ike Quartey, who is now the World Boxing Association 147-pound champion. Banks was never the same after that fight.

Time to refocus

Now 31 and a security guard, he spends his spare time at the Golden Gloves Gym training a polite little fellow by the name of Diego Magdaleno. Diego is 9.

"My goal now is to create a world champion," Banks said, shifting his sights from himself to someone he can help develop. "What I once saw in myself, I see now in Diego. Actually, I see a lot more in him than I ever had, plus he has the advantage of being able to work with an experienced person."

That experienced person receives no money for training Magdaleno and what little compensation he receives from the youngster's family is limited to "gas money here and there." One suspects the real compensation is the challenge Banks has given himself to find a fighter and perfect him, a two-part sequence of events that he was denied when he himself was an up-and-coming ring entrepreneur.

"He's already good and I'll make him better," Banks said as Magdaleno pummeled away at assorted bags and invisible enemies. "I can relate to what he's going through. It's hard for him because he has no one his age or size to fight, so there's only so much he can do.

"But I enjoy sharing information with him. I let him know the best way of doing things; whether he follows that advice or not is up to him. But he's in a position to be a lot better than I was."

And he was excellent

For all of the criticism he absorbed for failing to live up to his own expectations within the ring, Banks certainly had his moments of fame and good fortune. The Summer Olympics that begin today in Atlanta only rekindle memories of his rise to prominence and his own place in U.S. amateur boxing history.

"I was lucky, I was fortunate," he said, setting the disappointments aside. "I had to do it all myself and I didn't realize it would be so hard, but I achieved a goal I told my grandmother about when I was 13 or so.

"I told her I thought I'd make the Olympics in '84, but at least by going in '88 I got to feel the glory of the Olympics. That's a special moment. Unfortunately I didn't win, but the experience meant so much to be there and say you're representing America.

"I've come to realize the Olympics are political and they're all about money now and maybe the spirit isn't quite the same, but I still like them."

He likes them even though his failure to earn a medal at Seoul cost him dearly. Perhaps with the passage of time his achievements will be recognized for what they were, which is to say he was excellent in his day.

"I feel I'm worthy of being regarded as one of the country's (all-time) best amateurs," Banks said. "I hope people don't wait until I've passed away to say 'This was a wonderful guy and a good fighter.'"

He laughs, realizing only those who know him well have a handle on his positive side. It's obvious at this point in his life he'd like to be seen as a decent man with a soft spot for kids, an ex-fighter who doesn't swear and has tempered the desire to blow his own horn.

"You know how it is," he said, although no one can truly know the angst he has felt and probably still occasionally feels. "I've been set back for one reason or another lots of times in my life, especially the last few years. But I've always rebounded, just like I have now."

With that he nods toward Diego, still hammering away at his imaginary opponent.

archive