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 'Bad Boy' in fight to pull himself up off the mat'Bad Boy' in fight to pull himself up off the mat
Tony Badea, former world-ranked Edmonton fighter KO'd by drug and alcohol addictions, attempts a comeback
Curtis Stock, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Monday, March 17
"It's the bottom of the food chain. Like hell and heaven in the same place.
"I know it has only been three months," says Badea, who, because he works in the kitchen and is fully committed to the 12-stage Breakout Program -- religiously attending two meetings a day -- now sleeps a short distance away in the Herb Jamieson Centre. In a bed. And where he is able to shower.
"I know I'm going to be sick for the rest of my life. And I know I only have to go back once. It's so easy, so simple to lose your life.
"I'm not going to go back. The tape is not going backwards. "After a while, Badea says, "Come with me, I want to show you something." On the east side of Hope Mission, he points to lengths of black plastic, weighted down by the remnants of worn-out tires and tied to a green picket fence. "A three-bedroom condo," he laughs, but only half joking. "I know the guy. When it gets too cold he comes into the Mission. Otherwise, he prefers to stay out here." South of the Mission, just across the street, a yellowed pup tent sits forlornly. "A one-bedroom," Badea says.
Badea defected from Romania in 1992, leaving his boxing team at a World Cup match in Montreal and leaving his parents -- his father was Romania's national boxing coach and represented his country at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics -- and a sister in Bucharest. He had hoped to fight at the Barcelona Olympics later that summer, but he also knew that he wanted to come to North America. "To be a world champion. That was my goal. I was a Gold Gloves winner. The guy who took my spot on the Romanian boxing team won a bronze in Barcelona."
Eighteen years old at the time, Badea also wanted to avoid having to go into the army. "I didn't want to be a guy in a uniform carrying guns and shooting at the same people that shot at us in 1989," he says of the December uprising against dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
"By 1992, Romania was moving to democracy but it was also a lot of the same people wearing different clothes." From Montreal, Badea went to Toronto, where he met boxing coach Milan Lubovac. Lubovac, who also trains WBC super featherweight champion Jelena Mrdjenovich -- the headliner on the March 28 KO Boxing card at the Shaw Conference Centre -- bought Badea's contract and brought him to Edmonton.
Badea went undefeated in his first 13 fights, knocking out nine of his first 11 opponents. His short, snapping left hook was as devastating as his feral, overhand right. He would win the IBO Inter-Continental light middleweight title in the spring of 1997. Yet Lubovac was already tiring of Badea's refusal to train hard. "You want to know why he runs out of gas in some of his fights. Figure it out," he told The Journal in April 1998.
The following year, Badea won the Canadian junior middleweight title and then, in a savage, bloody rematch with Manny Sobral, took the Commonwealth title as well. nocked down six times -- once in the second round, twice in the third and three times in the sixth -- Sobral needed 50 stitches to treat cuts over his eyes. One of Badea's knockdown punches spun Sobral so hard he tore ligaments and dislocated his right ankle; another knockdown and Sobral fractured his fibula in three places.
But after winning a split decision over highly regarded Paulo Alejandro Sanchez, Badea's promising future turned sour; the rainbow melting into black. His Bad Boy moniker was only too true. e stopped listening to Lubovac, who was replaced by Joe Edwards, who was replaced by Jerome Coffee, who was replaced by Nelson Kitchen.
Only two months after beating Sanchez, Badea took a fight against Juan Carlos Candelo despite Lubovac's protestations that he was nowhere near ready. "I stopped being his coach, but I never stopped caring," said Lubovac, who has donated 20 tickets for Badea's return fight to the Hope Mission.
In an ESPN televised fight, Badea was badly battered by Candelo, who is still fighting and has still only been stopped once, having gone the distance with the likes of Winky Wright, Vernon Phillips, Marco Antonio Rubio, Alex Bunema and Michael Lerma. Six months later, Badea took a fight against England's Richard Williams in the United Kingdom. Badea hadn't even seen a tape of Williams. He didn't care. "I was the Bad Boy," he smiles. Williams knocked Badea down twice in the third round, ripping away Badea's Commonwealth belt. "I never said no to a fight. People said you can't do these things. I said I could. "Bad Boy," Badea repeats.
"I didn't listen. I did what I wanted to do. "Everybody I fought was going to get a taste of this guy," he says, flexing his left bicep that bulges hard against his white sweater.
Badea's last fight was July 19, 2002, when he went up against Phillips, who carried the WBO light middleweight title and who also still fights.
Badea had to lose eight pounds in one day for that fight. A fatigued Bad Boy was stopped in the fourth round. That's when Badea started drinking heavily and snorting cocaine. Four drinks were never enough. Neither were just a few lines of coke. "I lost myself. I went crazy. "After boxing, I wasn't ready for that kind of a fight. "You think you are invincible.
"I had the luxury of women. I had the luxury of having as much dope as I wanted. I had it all. Money in the bank. A nice condo. A car. "Then you get beat by the snake." Just about everything Badea ever owned was gone, poured down his throat or snorted up his nose."On a scale of 1-10, I'd say I was a 13 as far as addictions go," he says. "I should have been dead three or four times. "It's who you hang around with. They do drugs, you do drugs. There's no such thing as experimenting with drugs. It's an addiction. Period. "You have a drink. You smoke a line," says Badea, who has a record of 25-6-1. "I know what I had to go through to be like this --self-destructing, the drugs, the alcohol and out on the street.
"God is back in my life. I have found my faith. "The Herb Jamieson Centre's Breakout Program saved my life. "It is addicts helping addicts. They are my best friends. They are the people in the shadows. But everybody needs to eat." One of those friends is Brent Scully. "What he's doing is really awesome; inspiring," says Scully. "He bit off a big chunk of life. "If anybody can do it, he can."
At noon, Badea works out at the YMCA, racing against a treadmill, crunching his abdominal muscles and lifting weights. Five nights a week, at the basement Cougar Boxing Club where the redolent breath of sweat hangs heavy, he spars and trains some more. "In a year he will be better than ever," says Lubovac, leaning against a ring rope, every once in a while shouting out instructions. "Life had taken him down." For a 10 count.
"I watched him in his heyday," says Brad Hortie, a four-time national amateur champion, who is also working with Badea. "He was one of the best fighters this city ever produced. "He's not back to where he was. But he is getting there. His timing, his speed, his conditioning is all getting better. "I really think this is just the beginning of his rebirth, transformation or whatever you want to call it. "It's not an easy place to come back from. I know. I've been there myself," adds Hortie, who has overcome his own drug problems.
Outside of boxing, Badea isn't sure what his future might have in store.
"Right now I'm institutionalized; I just got my life back. "I was one of the best. I fought a lot of good fighters. "And then I lost about five years of my life. But you are looking at a different person. "It's a fight and, so far, I'm winning." In sports, they call it a comeback. They don't know what a comeback is. Not like Badea. "With every workout, with every punch I throw, I want to deliver a message," he says. "I'm not just going to show up. I'm doing this to get back to the top. "I want to show people that you can do this. You can beat it."
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