The thousand and one lives of Osvaldo Rivero, the entrepreneur who became the owner of half of Boca and reinvented boxing

Osvaldo Rivero He understood the boxing business as a child. He was the guy who lifted his gloves in the ring on nights at Barracas Central. The audience threw him coins which he collected and spent on candy. His father was a judge of those amateur matches and the club was the epicenter of his life. It was the 10th of Handsome in the late 70s and before that, a basketball player, also from the First Division team.

Shortly after the age of 20 he graduated in accounting, entered the Central bank and went to earn more money at the Customs. She no longer bought candy with what he collected. Goalkeeper pass Esteban Pogany it was his. Then another player came. And more. And when he started to count, eight of Boca’s 11 titles belonged to him. Even some substitutes. Anyone who wanted to play there or at the River called him. He was a young and trendy businessman. And she no longer worked on what she had studied.

That was a long time ago. Those were Rivero’s early lives. At the age of 75, he receives clarion at his home in a gated community in Tigre. The place has ceased to be the weekend space to become everyday. Before the pandemic I lived in Belgrano. The covid made him hospitalized and with uncertainty due to a picture of bilateral pneumonia that in the end did not occur. The experience changed that. It was a time when many were dying from the virus.

It’s been a long time since he traded boots for gloves. The day you turned 40, Juan Martón Whip Coggi was world champion and his coach, Saints Zacharias, He asked for “a hand” with what was coming. They knew each other because he was the father-in-law of Jorge Higuainthe father of tubewho was one of the players on his team. “I thought it would be Coggi start, Coggi end, but no. I continued”he says in a room of his house that has a window showing the houses of the neighborhood across the lake.

In between he got an unedited space on TV for boxing, presided over GEBAthey tempted him to be president of Barracas Central before them Claudio Chiqui Tapia, betrayed him and made enemies forever with many people. The ‘new normal’ has returned the big-time promoter in yet another role. Or Promotions He has Rivero’s sons running the business he piggybacked on. A legacy that has nothing to do with an accountant’s vintage.

What do you think life as an accountant would have been like?

– And, as an accountant… That he would start getting clients to evade taxes. They take care of it, don’t they? The only business worth studying is Medicine. You can have the joy of giving birth to a child or even saving someone. if they told me ‘Black, I wrote on this white sheet what you want’ I would not have dared to put what life has given me. Or lived it. Otherwise it would have been more boring, right? With this profession you know the world.

-How was your time in football?

– Half the world has called you. Everyone wanted to play Boca or River. Us (in Boca) except three, the rest was all ours. Everyone calls you. Maybe you took one, set it up elsewhere…

-Bragarnik didn’t invent anything…

-Yes, more or less… All the things I left for football were taken by (Gustavo) Mascardi. He only had one player, an excellent left-handed (Sergio Berti). Then he grabbed everything, everything. He kept everything. Every time I saw him in Punta del Este, I put my hand in his pocket and said: ‘Give me the half that is mine’ and we laughed.

-At one point the then president Menem entered the ring. Was there anything to do with it?

-He was cheeky! (laughs) He also played basketball. Once I played in the soccer team, because (Fernando) Galmarini had made a soccer team and we went to the city. I have a good one: once River was playing and at halftime he appeared in the sector where we were, we said goodbye and I introduced him to my father, who was with me, and it occurred to me to tell him an anecdote. In all clubs there was usually a bust of Eva Perón and after the liberating revolution They have come to take them away. A neighbor came and told my old man that on the 28th (police station) he would enter Barracas to take him away. And my old man, the animal, went and put him in a burlap sack and brought him home. He was left in the basement. Some time later my old man said to me from home: ‘Negrito, we will give this to the first Peronist constitutional president’. Menem was already president and when I finish telling him the anecdote he tells me: ‘It’s mine’ and I didn’t answer him. Nothing. Not even my old man. And I was not wrong. And he looks, I knew him. Once he came to advertise “Menem 95” and we did. Nobody wanted to put him, they called him Méndez … But we won so we were his favourites.

-Did it cost you to bring yourself back to boxing coming from football?

-Ninth. He did very well. I had Coggi, Julio César Vásquez and the Crust Castro. Boxing was not practiced in the Argentine Boxing Federation. So I set out to box and took care of the losses. But if there were gains it was 50-50. All three became number ones. There were no boxing rounds on TV. On Canale 9 they tell me they can’t broadcast boxing and they remove the program with the most listeners. Every time he brought someone, we screwed up Dario Vittori who did it ‘Theater as in Theater’. So they offer me Saturdays at 12pm. I was saved by Cabezón (Marcelo) Tinelli with mistakes… Canale 9 had a boxing cycle that was seen a lot, especially indoors. That show was forever. And the one who helped me and gave me the opportunity to finance everything I brought and never said no and always stood up for me was Alejandro Romay. They made their own money, certainly a lot more than me, but he was my financial father.

-Where do you think boxing is going today?

-One is not a wizard. Maybe we don’t know and right now a phenomenon that changes everything is about to enter the ring, like (Muhammad) Ali did at the time. If it hadn’t been for me, boxing would have been another.

-Does UFC or cage fighting take boxing away from the public?

I don’t understand both well. I don’t know when they are true and when they are false. Once someone came to represent him. When I asked him about the rights, he said no, that they have them (the Ultimate Fighting Championship company whose acronym names the discipline) and they don’t give them to anyone. A lot of money comes out of it. But I don’t see that’s true. He is more violent than boxing. They hit him on the head, I don’t understand. You’ll tell me I’m crazy, but boxing is a social obligation because it’s the only way a certain social class has to climb a small step. Guys don’t fight against each other, they fight for their lives. Whoever wins goes up one step, but not by beating the other. Who can be happy to get punched? And when it’s over, they hug. And the hug is not fake. He’s sincere.

– Were there enmities on this road?

-It’s bad to say it, but I think so.

-Why were they there?

-It was like this because of the things they did. It came out in Diario Popular and I brought proof of all the things that were being said about me. The memo ended by saying that anyone who had anything to say against me, and with evidence, we would hold a press conference. And if they were right, they executed me right there. Nobody called. And it’s not because I’m smart and leave no evidence. There are guys who cheat on you badly, who have been world champions, who you promoted, and then they judge you.

-Did they betray him?

-Puff, it’s an exercise.

How do those stab wounds feel?

-I’ll leave them there, it’s over. And I don’t accept the return. There are famous world champions… So it’s not like I’m used to it, but I can handle it.

Did some hurt more than others?

-Of course yes, but not to say who. This is a sea of ​​sharks. It works like nature. You have to get used to it or dedicate yourself to something else. You will not change the boxing world. They cheat you from one promoter to another, it’s not healthy.

-When did you realize it was like this?

-When I looked at my elbow and psoriasis started appearing. All the stuff that happens in boxing comes out from somewhere, it loads you. One day I said to a boy: ‘What can I do to cure myself?’. “You have to go live in the Bahamas”Tell me.

-Wonderful Mar…

-Ninth. Very well. Call him and ask him if she said everything she said about me to my face. First he went to Spain with my money. I had cashed a check from the Federation but I needed the money and I don’t know if I paid him the ticket and everything. And then he started going against me. He started with (Omar) Narváez. One day I was with (Erika boxer) Panther Farías at a convention and was in his prime. I asked him to call him because if I call him I don’t give a damn. They called him and I introduced myself. I confronted him and asked him for explanations. He told me to have a coffee and I said no, let’s talk about it right away: “If I messed you up, here’s your chance to mess me up”. I do not know what to do. For everything he’d told her, she had no answers. You have rotted boxing: you have won fights by putting money. Remember the one with (Martin) Murray in Vélez? Maravilla fell and the boy didn’t define it. If not, I didn’t charge. So he made a lot of them. He won against either of them in round 11, where they had already agreed that the other would go down. A fake, a bad bastard. If you ever interview him, ask him about all of this.

-In the end he told of a betrayal…

-That a friend cheats on you is fucked up and it happened to me. This is nothing. A trash. I can not tell you: “I made him world champion”. Ninth. As a marketing, brilliant, it was brilliant. But he is 49 years old and wants to continue boxing, moreover at the Luna Park, something is missing in the pad.

-And who are you? How would it present itself?

-Someone who lived as he thought. I should remember who said it (N of R: Victoria Ocampo): “When you don’t have the courage to live the way you think, you end up thinking how you live.” This is very good. I never wanted to cheat on anyone. If I meet someone who wants war (this is a sea of ​​sharks and still is, it’s not that it’s changed), you have to fight. But I had a mirror that was my old one. great guy. I don’t want to betray him.