Sergio “Maravilla” Martínez turned off his phone at 6 in the morning.
He had just beaten Julio César Chávez Jr. in Las Vegas, in a fight that 442 describes as epic. At 10, he turned it back on and, as he said on Podemos Hablar, the Telefe program, he had 1060 calls in just four hours.
When he lost to Miguel Cotto, he did more or less the same thing. But when he turned on his phone, the message was different: four calls. Three were from his mother.
“It was like running everything through a sieve, and everyone who wasn’t supposed to be there was gone”, summed up the boxer from Quilmes, who is based in Madrid. Martínez said that at 37, he was already a man, and that this contrast puts everything in its place.
He told the story at 45, when he was preparing to return to the ring after six years without fighting. The call figures are his own account, not independently verified information.
How many of the people who call you when you win would still be there if you lost?