Orlando Cruz is not a hero.
He is by all accounts a fine fighter who just might have a bright career ahead of him. He?s scheduled to fight one Jorge Pazos on Oct. 19th in the relatively non-descript Kissimmee, Fla. This ?might? bring him closer to a shot at the WBO featherweight title. Then again he ?might? lose, and fall right back into obscurity. Chances are you didn?t even know who this guy prior to last week?s admission that he?s gay.
So what?
Cruz is not talking about any of the few household names you might have known in the fledging sport of boxing. We?re talking about a 31-year-old, former 2000 Puerto Rican Olympian, who seems to be a part of an ongoing need to push the male gay lifestyle in our faces at every turn. It?s almost as if this is some sort of latest promotion and the manly sport of boxing is being used to advance it. Many boxing fans don?t want to hear it and it no one?s business but his.
Homosexuality is a decision.
What’s important is if Cruz has what it takes at this point in his career to win a world championship. What’s important is if he can compete with Nonito Donaire in a prizefight. But that didn?t stop Yahoo! Sports? Kevin Iole from declaring that Cruz is a ?hero? in his opening sap fest of an article on Cruz.
Iole, in the mother of all sins in this piece, even went so far as to compare him to Jackie Robinson for crossing the color line in Major League Baseball (yeah, he did). Let?s throw away the fact that Robinson was a highly decorated, four-letter athlete at UCLA or the first African American to play in Major League Baseball. He was so accomplished that he was the first player in sports history to have his uniform number (42) ?universally? retired. Jackie Robinson was, without question, a ?hero.” Orlando Cruz, no disrespect here at all, is much closer to something else that rhymes with that word.
You can keep a personal decision or preference to yourself, but not your ethnicity in a society that (to this day) will deride you for it. But judging by the way the waves of social media?s tides are crashing to the shore, something larger seems to be at play. This made immediate national news surrounding an athlete no one had ever seen or heard of before. To the extent that he is almost irrelevant, this revolves around an issue of choice, and an announcement like this can?t do anything except promote promiscuity. It won?t make for better athletes, or a more cohesive locker room of any sort. For Orlando Cruz, let’s hope the decision he made merely underscores his ability to fight a man with merit, rather than date one without it.
