Alexis Arguello : A battler in and out of the ring

He was so easy to like and so hard to know. In the end, Alexis Arguello was a man of the Nicaraguan people who once cheered him as their champ, then jeered him as a counter-revolutionary and later voted for him to be an Olympic flag-bearer, vice mayor and mayor. He was all they were, which means he was a man of contradictions.

His tragic death in Managua, reported early Wednesday, from a gunshot to the chest is under investigation. But the real truth, like the real man, might not ever be known. His contradictions were always a profound surprise.

Arguello’s great dignity and style were summed up so elegantly before his epic junior-welterweight loss to Aaron Pryor in 1982 by writer John Schulian, who called him “a custom-tailored, double-breasted blue blazer.’’ Yet later, Arguello battled drug addiction.

From joining the contras in the fight against the Sandinista Party which he later joined, I suspect there was always some battle raging within Arguello, whose dad attempted suicide when he was a 5-year-old.

During the last couple of days, I’ve seen former companions and corner men quoted as saying he guarded his privacy more than most. I remember sitting with him in 1996 at ringside in Albuquerque where he was working as a manager for fellow Nicaraguan Adonis Cruz in a loss to Johnny Tapia. He was polite and thoughtful, yet guarded in a way that seemed to say he was alone.

As a fight fan, that’s how I will remember him:

Alone.

Arguello, who in 1999 was voted the best junior-lightweight of the 20th century, has few rivals for his mix and mastery of well-practiced ring skill and instinctive courage. He will forever be defined by his loss in Miami’s Orange Bowl to Pryor, who overcame some apparent fatigue and put together a savage, fight-ending blitz in the 14th round after he drank from trainer Panama Lewis’ special bottle.

Arguello, who lost a 10th-round stoppage in a 1983 rematch with Pryor, didn’t complain then or later. In the ring, he was comfortable. There, he knew himself and his cruel art. He was the tormented artist only outside of it.

Our paths crossed a few times over the last three decades. I was in a Tucson crowd in 1980 when he beat Ruben Castillo. Before his last fight in 1995, I spoke with him before he lost in a comeback attempt to a Phoenix junior-welterweight, Scott Walker, who in 2004 took his own life. We spoke in 2006 in Canastota, N.Y., before Michael Carbajal’s induction to the International Boxing Hall of Fame and again in Los Angeles before Oscar De La Hoya’s May, 2008 victory over Steve Forbes.

In each brief exchange, I walked away hoping he had conquered the inner turmoil, including a report that he contemplated suicide while on a yacht in Miami during the mid-1980s. You pulled for him. At opening ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I remember thinking he had silenced the demons when I saw him at the front of the Nicaraguan delegation, carrying the flag for a country that took two houses, two cars and a bank account from him after the Sandinistas grabbed power in 1979.

But I took a look at the photo from Beijing after his death was reported and noticed what I didn’t see in China: Arguello was still alone.

If the tragedy is in fact a suicide as has been reported in Nicaraguan media, it is even harder to understand. Everybody believed that Arguello, dead at 57, finally had what he wanted with his political victory. After Beijing, he won a disputed 51.3 percent of the vote in the November election for mayor of Managua. Finally, it looked as if the people’s champ was also their choice. Yet in a contradiction that is as sad as it is final, Arguello’s victory ends with his – their — loss.