Boxing
An engaging story of the Cuban Dainier Peró, who fights on the Tszyu-Murtazaliev card on Saturday
Dainier Peró’s existential moment came while he was sitting on a rock somewhere near a remote island off the coast of the Bahamas. He sat there and thought, “I can’t believe this is where I’m going to die.” This was the fifth time a Cuban heavyweight had tried to escape Cuba and the fifth time he had been captured. He was one of 25 brought in by the Cuban Coast Guard. Only this time, Peró and the group were banished to an isolated island instead of prison.
This was no resort. There were no gentle waves lapping against the pliable white sand, no hissing water as the tide receded. His ceiling was a black, starry sky that you could curl up under in just a T-shirt and shorts, with everything he owned stuffed into a backpack.
On Saturday evening, 25-year-old Peró, the 2020 Cuban Olympic super heavyweight champion, will face Willie Jake Jr. on the main event card of Premier Boxing Champions on Amazon Prime between IBF junior middleweight champion Bakhram Murtazaliev and Tim Tszyu of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.
Do you think Peró (8-0, 6 knockouts) has any earnest concerns? Do you think any heavyweight in the world could stress him out like 10 attempts to escape Cuba? Do you think his eyes won’t turn and see the vision of a skinny Dainier on the beach, reduced to eating worms and drinking from a rusty oil drum that has washed ashore?
Peró was caught nine times while trying to escape. He failed on the 10th attempt.
Dainier Pero with manager and coach Bob Santos (photo courtesy of Team Pero)
“Oh, I’m thinking back,” Peró said through a translator, Diana Santos, wife of Peró’s coach and manager Bob Santos, The Ring’s 2022 Coach of the Year. “It’s motivation because when you come from the bottom, you want to get to the top and you are grateful for everything. Remembering what I went through gives me the strength to move on. I learned many things. First of all: the destitute don’t get infirmed. I had to push myself.”
Breaking through meant getting out of Cuba.
On his fifth attempt in tardy 2021, Cuban authorities thought they would fix Peró and the group he was with. He was among 25, including women and compact children. They were not returned to Cuba to be put behind bars. Instead, the punishment was to be on an island for five days without food, water or medical supplies. Without shelter, the blazing sun took its toll, but the group had palm trees to hide behind. They were missing the food and water they had brought with them for more than two days. So they resorted to drinking rainwater from an oil barrel, the sticky residue of which stuck to the bottom. Food became so sparse that they were forced to eat worms. Peró, 5-foot-10 and 235 pounds, became desperate, even looking at the immense rats on the island.
For days, Peró hoped that a passing plane would spot them or that Cuban authorities would come back for them.
“You could taste the oil in the water,” Peró recalls. “I’ve never been infirmed. I just remember that I was constantly thirsty. We ate worms. We ate everything we could get our hands on. At one point we thought about catching a immense rat and eating it. We were taken away (by Cuban authorities) before we had to do that. But it makes you think. Water might have helped. On the fourth day we thought they would leave us there.
He went to a secluded part of the island. He entered the water towards a group of rocks near the shore. He climbed up and sat on the rocks, looking out at the ocean and wondering if he would ever get out.
If it weren’t for Peró, a respected Cuban Olympian, Cuban authorities would have abandoned the group on the island.
“I still had a lot of work to do, but it bothered me to see three little children suffering,” said Peró, who, despite the unbearable hardships he endured, has the disposition of a jolly giant. “It couldn’t have been worse than when I was 12, when my mother died of leukemia (at the age of 36). They pulled me out of school to tell me that my mother (Luisa Justiz) had died. It wasn’t shocking news because I knew he had cancer. I didn’t see her until the funeral. But it was still a very tough time for me, the worst time in my life, even worse than being on that island.
Peró was raised by his paternal aunt, Daimi Peró. His father, Eunice Peró, still lives in Cuba. Peró says he talks to his father several times a week.
The fight with Jake (11-5-2, 3 KO) will last eight rounds. The longest distance Peró ever played as a professional was four rounds. He covered this distance twice, but he did not train for these fights.
“Peró is bigger than (heavyweight world champion Oleksandr) Usyk, he has faster hands than Usyk, but the most critical thing is how much he wants it and wants success when he gets paid,” Bob Santos said. “Right now his work ethic is great. Everything will depend on how he handles success. He has all the tools to become the first Cuban heavyweight champion of the world. He is a bigger version of Usyk. He has the speed of a middleweight. He’s not tired because Cuba didn’t let him fight for two years. In the case of heavyweight fighters, they don’t mature until they are around 32 years aged. He is 25 years aged. He is very adolescent for a heavyweight fighter. This is a baby for a heavyweight.
“If he wasn’t an Olympian, the Cuban government would have left his ass on this island to die. Boxing saved his life in more ways than one.
A few days after his 22nd birthday, Peró finally succeeded on his 10th try. If he failed, he vowed never to try again. Cuban coastwatchers were in the water. They spotted him in the boat, though for some reason they never stopped him.
“It was like a miracle,” said Peró, who is working on American citizenship and lives in Las Vegas. “Every day I am grateful to be in this country.”
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