Guest Author - Jill Florio
The autobiography of champion boxer Rusty Rosenberger is a must-read for fans of the sport, but even more important, this candid tale offers our cynical world a real hero. Rosenberger may have been knocked down, but not out.
In Unclaimed Destiny: Heart of a Champion, Rosenberger declares his destiny was to win. By all accounts, the 1979 New Jersey Middleweight Boxing Champion should have won the World Title. Having blown away the competition in a fabulous career rise, he suddenly fell from fame. His story describes a shocking betrayal by the boxing manager he trusted. Two mysterious pills were all it took to change the outcome of history and one man's world.
Rosenberger never managed to really to get his game back after Lou Duva drugged him. A series of physical and emotional hardships plagued him for years, until he turned his skills to teaching boxing for fitness, coining the Boxercise fitness craze that swept the nation in the eighties. Then he decided to tell his story.
While it doesn't seem unusual that a fighter's game can be rigged, it's surprising that an amoral manager would trip his own racehorse, felling a young man's promising career in it's prime. From the standpoint of the "pen being mightier than the sword," one hopes that Rosenberger has managed to eviscerate Lou Duva in return.
Rosenberger's message comes through - don't let the turkeys get you down. His tale unashamedly bares his warrior's soul, proving himself a real contender, a modern-day hero we can believe in.
Rosenberger's unpretentious writing style makes for a quick, refreshing read in 156 pages.
Jill Florio, August 2003
