Guiseppe “Drew” Kidd has beaten the odds and made it all the way back to the edge of a boxing ring in the same building where he suffered a severe brain injury in sparring less than a year ago.
With a crowd of boxers and their relatives and friends cheering and chanting, “Drew! Drew! Drew!” Friday evening, the 31-year-old heavyweight fighter slowly descended the final 19 stairs from the balcony to the gym floor at Garfield Park Fieldhouse.
He stepped gingerly, assisted by his sister Carmela Brown, his trainer George Hernandez and his friend and fellow boxer Lamar Stephens. When he reached the last step, Kidd was helped into a wheelchair and completed his trek to ringside.
“We’ve been planning this return for Drew ever since it happened,” Hernandez said.
“It” was the sparring blow that sent Kidd to the hospital. And “planning” was more akin to hoping last August, when Kidd was rushed to Mt. Sinai Hospital and kept in a medically induced coma in critical condition, then wheeled into surgery.
After a series of surgeries and months of rehabilitation to learn to move, talk and feed himself again, Kidd made his dramatic return to Garfield Park for Friday’s eight-bout competition among amateur boxers aged 8 to 31 and weighing 68 to 200-plus pounds.
The annual event was to be held outside, where Kidd would face a considerably less challenging entrance. But an afternoon thunderstorm persuaded organizers to erect the temporary ring inside. That left Kidd with a series of staircases to negotiate.
“It was very nice,” he said of the reception, which his sister had kept a secret until the last minute. “I thought we were going to get something to eat.”
Kidd was introduced to the audience by Jim Hobson, the supervisor at Garfield Park, where Kidd trained as a professional fighter, where Hernandez trains amateurs and pros and where Kidd was injured Aug. 9 as he sparred for a bout.
He received a large framed photograph of himself in a boxer’s pose for that Aug. 13 fight he never made. “We thought we would have to present it to him in his bed,” Hobson said. “But as you can see, he’s sitting right here.”
No one was more touched by the event than trainer Hernandez, who summoned an ambulance that August day and had to push his injured fighter’s tongue back to clear his airway before paramedics arrived.
“To leave here on a stretcher and come back walking is incredible,” Hernandez said.
He rushed to embrace Kidd and greeted him with “Hey, Drew, baby!” as he arrived in a sport utility vehicle driven by his sister.
More Top Picks Tiller
Brown said her brother is on a break from rehabilitation sessions until August. “Then he will go to Oak Forest Hospital for sessions 45 minutes a day three days a week.
“He’s doing wonderful,” Brown said. “He just needs to realize he can do it.”
Kidd watched the bouts from ringside, throwing pretend punches and smiling as he posed for pictures with boxers and friends. He tapped his bare fist against the gloved fist of Chris Rooney, who won a 180-pound bout.
When it was over, Kidd and his helpers retraced his careful steps back up to the main floor of the fieldhouse. There, down a hallway to his right, was another boxing ring, the one where his last sparring session ended prematurely.
In this corner
Shane Mosley’s domination of Fernando Vargas ended last Saturday when Vargas rose defenseless after being floored by a Mosley left hook to the chin for a sixth-round technical knockout. The fight will be replayed at 9 p.m. Saturday on HBO. The 154-pound junior middleweight matchup will precede the live telecast of Carlos Baldomir defending his WBC 147-pound welterweight title against Arturo Gatti.
———-