Columnist Dean Juipe: Aging fighters can’t escape Father Time

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, May 20, 1998 | 7:40 a.m.

LIKE EVERY good husband and father, Cornelius Boza-Edwards carries pictures of his loved ones in his wallet. Ask and he'll show you.

He can also show you another picture that he says he has carried for more than 20 years. It's the one of his idol, Carlos Palomino.

Boza-Edwards, now 42 years old and a former WBC junior lightweight world champion, was something of a contemporary of Palomino's as the latter pieced together a marvelous boxing career in the 1970s. Palomino, a former WBC welterweight champion, is now 48.

Boza-Edwards retired as a fighter in 1986. Palomino quit in 1979.

The significance: Palomino has started fighting again and he has a difficult bout scheduled with Wilfredo Rivera next Saturday in Los Angeles. Add in the soon-to-be-announced fight between George Foreman -- almost 50 years old -- and Larry Holmes -- 47 -- and it appears as if boxing not only has no age limit but willingly embraces the graying set.

But 18 years between fights for Palomino?

"It's a big mistake," Boza-Edwards said. "Heroes come and go and there's no bringing back the old Carlos Palomino. If he wants to stay in the sport, why can't he just go to the gym and help some kids?"

Both Boza-Edwards and Palomino were great fighters. Both are intelligent men, the latter owning a college degree and the former a well-versed authority on a number of worldly topics. Yet that's where the similarities end.

"I've been asked thousands of times if I was interested in making a comeback," Boza-Edwards said at the Golden Gloves Gym, where he frequently works out. "People say, 'Look at the money you can make.' But the Boza who fought guys like Bobby Chacon is gone. It's like two different people."

Palomino launched his comeback a year ago and has his eye set on a lucrative but unlikely fight with WBC welterweight champ Oscar De La Hoya. But as strong and as gifted as Palomino once was, De La Hoya would overpower him and it's possible Rivera will too.

"Foreman (who sat out 10 years) was a one-in-a-million exception," Boza-Edwards said. "Once you reach a certain age or once you've sat out four or five years, it's impossible to recapture your former self. Your bones aren't the same, your reflexes aren't the same and you're not as fast as you once were.

"If that wasn't the case, we'd all still be fighting."

Palomino, 31-3-3, has fought four times since his return but he has not faced more than journeyman competition. Rivera, 27-3-1 and coming off an eighth-round knockout loss to De La Hoya last December, may slap him back to reality.

"My friends are worried I might get hurt," Palomino told the Southern California periodical Latin Style. "But I'm in great shape. Judge me after you see me in the ring."

Boza-Edwards will -- although he knows what to expect.

"No way he's the same," he said. "When I was 31 I started asking myself questions because I was getting hit left and right by guys I considered slow. I knew I was getting too old for the sport and, if I didn't know, nature could tell me by looking in the mirror."

That's an ever-changing snapshot that doesn't lie, even if the picture isn't always as flattering as it once was.