HAVANA — Fernando Galván charged forward and threw a looping right uppercut. Arlen López, the Cuban boxer who won the light-heavyweight gold medal at the Olympics last summer, took a half-step back and countered with a quick, clinical left hook.
The punch landed on the corner of Galvan’s chin, whiplashing the journeyman boxer’s head, knocking him unconscious and dropping him face first to the canvas of a small boxing ring in the center of an auditorium in Aguascalientes, Mexico, this month.
López’s knockout showed the blend of power, precision, art, science and violence that has made Cuba’s amateur boxing program the world’s best.