HAVANA, Cuba – The three-time Olympic champion and six-time world boxing champion, Félix Savón Fabré, is enjoying the benefit of parole from the end of 2024 after serving six years in a penitentiary center on the outskirts of Havana, as confirmed by several sources to CubaNet.
Savón Fabré was accused of a sexual crime against a minor and his sanction was never communicated to public opinion, although official secrecy did not prevent his case from spreading inside and outside of Cuba. It is not known when or where his trial was held, nor who his lawyers were.
“He had about two years left (to serve his sentence),” said a former national preselection boxer, now retired, on condition of anonymity, “but he looks “groggy.”
“Grogui” is a term used in boxing, and popularly as a synonym for “stunned by blows” or “stunned by any cause.”
It is not clear whether the request for parole allegedly requested by the former boxer or by his representatives, or by both, it was granted for his behavior after having extinguished more than half of the sentence imposed as they were primary sanctions, or for health problems.
Savón Fabré’s release began to be noticed when he appeared more frequently in family photos on the Facebook social network of one of his daughters, including the days of the Christmas holidays.
Previously, some sources indicated that Savón Fabré was seen at his home in the Fontanar district, in the Havana municipality of Boyeros, at specific times when receiving “passes” from the penitentiary center where he was held, which according to what is known is a so-called “farm.” ” in which former officials usually serve their prison sentences.
In 2018 he had been arrested and interned in the Combinado del Este, independent journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa reported at the time.
Savón Fabré was always seen as a sports hero on the Island and after Teófilo Stevenson, he was the boxer most admired by the late dictator Fidel Castro.
After his retirement, after his third Olympic gold in Sydney 2000, Savón Fabré dedicated part of his time to painting and exhibited on several occasions in different places in the capital, the last one at the Boyeros cultural house. There he presented a collection of almost 50 “collages” with photographs of moments in his life, between oil strokes. It is unknown if he continued with this hobby in prison.
In his career the legendary boxer He won the Olympic titles in Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000, joining Stevenson and the Hungarian Laszlo Papp as the only ones with this merit in the history of the Summer Games. He could have won a fourth Olympic gold if his country had not boycotted the 1988 Seoul Games.
He also won six consecutive AIBA World Championships in 1986 (Reno), 1989 (Moscow), 1991 (Sydney), 1993 (Tampere), 1995 (Berlin), and 1997 (Budapest), as well as a silver at the World Championships. 1999 in Houston.
In Budapest he lost to the Uzbek Ruslan Chagaev 4-14 but weeks later the Cuban received the gold medal when the former Soviet was disqualified for two professional fights before the World Cup.
In the American city, Savón Fabré lost the title to local Michael Bennett by no-show after Cuba announced its withdrawal from the competition in protest against arbitration decisions that it considered “unfair” and after an order received from Havana from Fidel Castro.
A year later, the man from Guantanamo eliminated Bennett before regulation time in the Australian Olympic event. He would win the Cuban national championship 13 times between 1985 and 1998 and along the way he achieved victories over men who would later become professional champions such as Bennett himself, Ray Mercer, Shannon Briggs, Lamon Brewster, Ruslan Chagaev and Sultan Ibragimov.
By retiring in January 2001 and after 20 years in the ring, he had accumulated 342 victories and 17 losses, nine of them against Cubans. Among the knockouts received, four were delivered by his countrymen Juan Carlos Delís Cause (on two occasions), Freddy Rojas and Noel Pérez and another two by the Soviet Usman Arsaliyev and the North Korean Li Dal-Chen.
Nobody imagined that the legendary Cuban boxer would cloud his career by starring in one of the most disastrous plots in national sport..
