The fight of a lifetime
His pro career KO’d by drugs, now Steve Molitor’s in a good place
Three days after his knockout loss to Celestino (Pelenchin) Caballero, Steve Molitor stopped by promoter Allan Tremblay’s place in Brampton to pick up his paycheque. Over the previous two years their Monday meet-ups had become a post-fight ritual.
Win or lose, the title unification fight was set to pay Molitor a career-high $175,000 (U.S.).
Molitor chatted with Tremblay and collected his money. Then he disappeared.
He entered Nov. 21, 2008, an undefeat- ed junior featherweight champ in his athletic prime, and thought a big win would lead to mainstream fame and $600,000 paydays. But he left with a loss and shattered confidence, and spent the next three weeks cocooned in his Mississauga condo, crushing OxyContin tablets into dust and snorting them like cocaine.
Tremblay called Molitor’s then-fiancée, Tiffany.
Molitor was sober enough to hear the frustration and fear in Tiffany’s voice as she described his condition. Their first child was due in a month, and she didn’t know how she’d handle both a newborn and a partner hooked on painkillers and self-pity. Later he rose from the couch for what felt like the first time in weeks and gathered his drugs — $6,000 worth, Molitor estimates.
He kicked his Oxy habit that night, he says, because his son’s imminent birth forced him to focus. Steel Molitor was born Jan. 5, 2009.
A decade later, Molitor remembers two turning points in 2008. One cost him his title. The second helped him regain the belt, and more.
“My son saved my life,” says Molitor, now a 38-year-old divorced father of two. “I just had enough. I was being such a (wimp) about not being a world champion. I said, be a f-----g man. Get it back. Win a world title for him.”
In November of 2006, Molitor crushed Michael Hunter to win the IBF 122-pound world title. From there, the Sarnia native became one of boxing’s busiest champions, defending his belt five in just 13 months.
Molitor’s backers at Orion Sports Management used the fights to headline the Rumble at Rama series, a franchise that aimed to revitalize boxing in Ontario. They also bought airtime on TSN, spreading Molitor’s fame across Canada.
Those early defences earned Molitor a reputation as an accurate counterpuncher, and left him with a pair of aching hands. The success only made him more marketable. As for the hands, he says a doctor supplied him with painkillers — first Percocet, then OxyContin.
Though he started the drugs to dull pain, Molitor acknowledges his painkiller use quickly became recreational. If he didn’t have a fight scheduled he’d use the meds like he did cocaine and liquor — just to get high. When he signed a contract for a fight he’d quit cold turkey and head straight into training.
But if the drugs affected his training, neither promoters nor long-time coach Chris Johnson noticed.
“To this day, I’ve never seen anyone train like him,” Johnson said. “That’s one thing about Molitor, he works hard and he’s f-----g disciplined.”
Meanwhile, each successive win pushed Molitor closer to a reckoning with the 122-pound division’s ruling class. By March 2008, Mexico’s Israel Vazquez held the WBC title, while the WBA belt belonged to Caballero, a five-foot-11 Panamanian bruiser.
In Vazquez, Tremblay spotted opportunity.
Vazquez stood just five-foot-four and liked to trade punches at close range. The five-foot-seven Molitor was a sharpshooting counterpuncher who could pepper Vazquez from distance.
Beyond that, Tremblay says, three brutal bouts against Rafael Marquez had left Vazquez drained and vulnerable. But Vazquez also recognized his deep-seated fatigue, and made clear in March 2008 he planned to take a sabbatical.
That decision left Molitor to deal with Caballero, whose length and aggressiveness made him a tough matchup. By the spring of 2008, the fighters’ management teams had reached an agreement in principle to meet the following fall.
“It was time to cash in for Molitor on a much larger scale than he’d been receiving,” Tremblay says. “He could have said no. He had no qualms at all. That’s the time you roll the dice.”
The matchup didn’t bother Molitor. After a late-night training run he called Johnson and volunteered his thoughts.
“I can beat Caballero,” he told Johnson, “because I have you, and he doesn’t.”
Molitor was already19-0 when Johnson, a bronze medallist in the 1992 Olympics, took over as his trainer. His task was to boost Molitor’s confidence and unleash his punching power. Four fights later, he was IBF champ.
“Me and Chris were untouchable,” Molitor says. “Did anyone get close to us? Never.”
By 2008, Johnson was earning a monthly retainer from Orion, plus a percentage of Molitor’s purses. Most trainers receive one or the other, but Orion paid a premium because Molitor kept improving. Still, Johnson lobbied for a raise, arguing that training Molitor was a full-time job that drained energy from other fighters in Johnson’s stable. He reasoned that Orion should pay more or risk harming their flagship fighter.
The parties can’t agree on what happened next. Tremblay says Johnson organized Molitor’s defection from Orion. Johnson blames cutman Lenny DeJesus, whom he says connected Molitor with New Jersey-based promoter Murad Muhammad. Either way, in June 2008, Molitor announced he was leaving Orion for Muhammad, who Molitor and Johnson said promised a steep pay raise, despite a long history of not paying bills.
But a week later, the fighter reversed course, issuing a joint news release with Orion detailing a long-term commitment. Without Johnson.
“Once they figured out the money that was being offered to them was Monopoly money, Steve came crawling back,” Tremblay says. “There was no more arguing after that. We went forward.”
Molitor spent the summer of 2008 in Montreal, training with new coach Stephane Larouche, and put a positive spin on the setup. He told reporters he started to grow stale in Johnson’s camp, and felt refreshed among the other world champions Larouche trained. In late August, he defeated Argentine Ceferino Dario Labarda via TKO.
Up next: Caballero.
Looking back, Molitor says the big and small changes surrounding the Caballero bout put him off. Not the money, of course. The $175,000 nearly doubled Molitor’s recent paydays and was roughly six times Caballero’s standard pay rate.
But Molitor says the schedule and stakes disrupted his fight week routine. After five straight Saturday night fights, this bout was scheduled for a Friday. Instead of the same-day weighins Ontario rules stipulate, this fight would also require him to weigh in the day before.
Even the pre-fight news conference moved from the Delta Chelsea Inn to the Westin Harbour Castle. When photographers posed the fighters, Molitor looked tense. He sought eye contact with Caballero, who gleefully refused to reciprocate, knowing it bothered Molitor.
At Thursday’s official weighin Caballero finally stared Molitor down, and uttered the only words he’d speak in English all week. “I’ll break your face,” he said. TSN and Showtime were oblivious to the behind-thescenes drama. The Showtime broadcast crew anticipated an intriguing 50-50 matchup.
“(Molitor) is either going to get overrun or he’s going to box beautifully to a victory,” said analyst Steve Farhood. “I really don’t see any middle ground.”
Molitor can’t explain what happened next. He can’t remember anything besides feeling tense.
He nailed Caballero with a counter left in the first round, but 30 seconds later Caballero landed a right and left that made Molitor’s knees go soft. Caballero applied more pressure each round, landing stiff jabs and clubbing right hands to Molitor’s body. After round three, an exasperated Larouche begged Molitor to change gears.
“Just stay off the f-----g ropes,” he pleaded. “It’s not Steve Molitor here tonight. It’s not you, man.” Thirty seconds into the fourth, Caballero dropped Molitor with an uppercut. When Molitor rose, Caballero kept pounding him. By the time referee Luis Pabon intervened to stop the fight, Larouche had already climbed the ring apron to surrender.
In the post-fight interview, Caballero called out the division’s best other champs.
“Tell the Mexicans to put their pants on and come see Pelenchin,” he said.
And play-by-play man Nick Charles addressed Molitor’s predicament.
“The question is,” Charles said, “where does Steve Molitor go from here?”
When a battered Steve Molitor returned to his hotel suite he found an OxyContin tablet on his pillow. A friend had left it. “Just to help me sleep,” Molitor says.
From there the binge started and, with no title and no fight on the horizon, Molitor saw no reason to stop. Not until Tremblay called the condo, and Molitor heard the despair in his pregnant fiancée’s voice.
Her due date was less than a month away. Molitor says he treated it like a binding deadline and quit drugs for good that night. He collected every pill, dumped it all down the trash chute, and hasn’t touched hard drugs since.
“It was tough, but it was easy because my son came,” Molitor said. “January 5.”
Eventually, Molitor and Johnson reunited and the fighter regained the IBF crown, but it felt different. Molitor’s speed remained but his confidence had eroded, along with the timing that made him so effective.
Molitor lost the title for good in 2011, then split with Johnson again. He went 1-1 in his final two fights and retired in 2012.
“I didn’t watch those fights. I didn’t want to see it,” Johnson says. “I didn’t want to see him drift. I just wanted to keep the memory of how good he was in my head.”
Two years into his retirement, Tremblay helped Molitor get hired at Triple-M Metals, a Kitchener-based scrap metal recycling company. Molitor oversees a crew of 15 workers. These days he shares his business card as eagerly as he once displayed his championship belt.
Where the world titles signified Molitor’s elite status even among world-class fighters, the business card symbolizes what Molitor has come to cherish since leaving the ring: stability.
“I have no regrets. I don’t need the fame, the belts and all that,” Molitor said. “If I changed something, that could mess up what I have now. I have a good job with a good company, and two healthy kids who love me.”