Catching up with three Canadian Olympic boxers,
In the run-up to the Rio Games, the Star tells the story of three Canadian stars from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles
Willie deWit, Shawn O’Sullivan and Dale Walters were household names after the 1984 Olympics, a showcase for Canada’s golden generation of boxers. Since then, the fighters hailed as national heroes have followed very different and often unexpected paths. Collectively, they’ve taken their share of hits, often ones that no one saw coming, but also enjoyed sweet successes.
CALGARY— When a boxer, sometimes damaged beyond the obvious, moves on from the fight game, it is historically more likely he’ll require a defence lawyer than become one.
So here, amidst the dark-stained furniture that lends appropriate gravitas to courtroom 307 of the Calgary Courts Centre, it seems incongruous to watch the impossibly broad-shouldered man with the familiar boyish face speak of legal precedence and case law, a heavyweight presence scoring points with clearminded logic rather than leather-covered fists.
When Willie deWit is remembered east of the Prairies, it is likely as the Bunyanesque pugilist seemingly carved from the Canadian Shield. A six-foot-two power puncher with blond tresses, cleft chin and piercing blue eyes who was a national hero in the 1980s. In what was a boxing renaissance in this country, he and sprightly Shawn O’Sullivan, from Toronto’s Cabbagetown, enthralled Canadians with the promise that one of our own might earn Olympic gold in the ring for the first time in 52 years.
Both world amateur champions, both seemingly plucked from Central Casting and both dubbed as Great White Hopes — a moniker deWit found offensive — they were charming, eloquent and burgeoning with talent as they headed off to Los Angeles in 1984.
“Two golden boys,” recalls Rod Proudfoot, deWit’s manager at the time. “They were like every guy next door, the young man that a girl wouldn’t mind bringing home to her mom and dad because they were both good young guys . . . Between them, they captured both sides of the country.”
Here in Calgary the story didn’t end with deWit in the ring, the way he is frozen in memory for many of us. He moved on. Quite impressively. At 55, deWit is a highly regarded litigator, the great hope for those charged with anything from drunk driving and drug possession to weapons offences or murder.
“I don’t think I’m the boxer that’s now a lawyer,” he says in the offices of Wolch deWit Watts & Wilson. “I’m the lawyer who used to be a boxer.”
That he feels the perception has flipped is an extraordinary story of one athlete’s reinvention.
“He was a local hero, a Canadian hero,” says Peter Martin, a judge on the Alberta Court of Appeal and once a partner in the firm deWit joined in 1996.
“To say, ‘I will now pursue a career in law,’ I think it’s outstanding what he has achieved.”
Several factors pushed deWit out of boxing before he turned 27 despite a pro record of 21 wins, one loss and one draw.
His father, Len, and younger brother, Theo, died in a small plane crash, the day after Willie’s 26th birthday. Beyond being soul-crushing, it stripped down his support system. DeWit says “it was a different world without them” and, at the same time, he could sense he was no longer improving as a fighter.
Also, despite a general lack of awareness about concussions and potential brain damage in those days, he innately knew it was better to “get out of the game too soon rather than too late.”
“You don’t have to be too smart to figure out that if you keep getting hit in the head, that’s not going to be too good for you.”
It was one thing to leave but quite another to take up a demanding pursuit such as law. During his fighting career he befriended Calgary lawyer Milt Harradence, a larger-than-life character who himself used to box. Harradence, who had lost a son in a plane crash, became a father figure of sorts.
Harradence pushed deWit to study law and, despite initial resistance, finally convinced the boxer to try wearing a different type of robe.
“Being an ex-athlete, people aren’t going to think you’re that smart. For boxers, it’s even worse,” says deWit, recounting his mentor’s logic. “But if you have a law degree, that goes a long way to dispelling that.”
Boxing, a sport in which you have to think fast and react faster, was a great training ground for law, deWit believes. More than that, he’s found sparring in the courtroom fulfils that same adrenalin rush he would get from stepping into a ring.
“It’s not quite as good as when you drill a guy with a good left hook, but when you get a good cross-examination of somebody and you really affect their credibility, it’s a pretty good feeling,” he says.
Through 22 years of practising law — including some high-profile police and murder cases — deWit has made a good life for himself. He’s been married to Suzan for 27 years and the two of them have four grandchildren. The couple are empty nesters — they had two children together and Suzan brought two into the marriage.
He motorbikes, works out two or three times a week, plays old-timers hockey and says that for 20 years, he has kept his weight at 230 to 235. DeWit fought at 212 and looks like he could still do damage in the ring.
He keeps a heavy bag in the garage that he pounds on once a week, much the way he started all those years ago in the unheated garage of his parents’ Grande Prairie home.
As for any potential brain injury from his previous career, he expresses no concern.
“I’ll let people make their own judgment,” he says with a laugh. “I remember reading an article (saying) if you stay in the game more than 10 years, you’re going to be more likely to suffer significant damage. I, of course, got out before that.”
DeWit started boxing late, at 17, deciding to switch from being an all-star quarterback. By 27 he was done.
Earl Wilson, another partner turned judge from deWit’s firm, says there had to be questions about whether the boxer had retired with enough brainpower to be a lawyer after “we’ve all seen some of these poor bastards who have suffered terribly.”
“In the practice of law, other professionals would have the thought in the back of their minds. ‘Is he OK?’ Can he do it?’ It’s only when you work with Willie for a while that you would be able to say there’s been no residual effect whatsoever.”
While deWit says he has no lingering physical damage, boxing still causes him pain.
That Olympic medal? ‘Devastating’
An Olympic silver medal should represent one of life’s great accomplishments. For deWit, it is a stark reminder of failure.
For almost 30 years, it remained hidden: a symbol of a defeat he had no desire to relive.
Once his wife, Suzan, suggested he get a tattoo of the Olympic rings along with the year 1984. DeWit looked at her, baffled.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “It wasn’t a victory for me.”
DeWit got to the gold medal bout in L.A. With a nation watching, he started strongly but was out-pointed by Henry Tillman, an American he had previously knocked out twice.
Many Canadians believed deWit had won, as did Howard Cosell, calling the fight for ABC. All five judges scored it in favour of Tillman.
“Devastating. Just devastating” is how deWit recalls the experience. “You had the whole pressure of the weight of the country on your shoulders, and I thought I won the fight, too. I’ve watched it numerous times. And I’ve had numerous people tell me that. But that doesn’t really help you.”
Proudfoot, his former manager, recalls: “There was a saying in the U.S. around the time of the Olympics that if you knocked an American out, you might get a tie.”
A few years ago, Suzan took the medal out of hiding and put it in a Plexiglas box along with a picture of her husband training. It has been grudgingly placed on a shelf in his office, but given no prominence amid other boxing souvenirs.
“It’s not gold,” deWit says. “Back then, for 10 years afterwards or 15 years afterwards, people would go, ‘Where’s your medal?’ I’d go, ‘I don’t know. Somewhere.’ ”
DeWit says the pressure got to him in the Tillman fight. He couldn’t sleep the night before and fatigue hurt him. Proudfoot sometimes shared a room with deWit on the road and says it wasn’t unusual to wake up in the middle of the night and see his roommate shadowboxing.
“He’s only ever blamed himself,” says Proudfoot. “He was so disappointed in his performance.”
DeWit laments that sports psychology wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. Otherwise, someone might have been there to calm him and explain that the anxiety he felt was normal.
He turned pro at 23 immediately after the Olympics and did well. There was talk at one point of a bout, and a massive payday, with Mike Tyson. But a bad loss — his only pro defeat — to American Bert Cooper slowed his advance. DeWit was knocked down four times in a savage first two, and only two, rounds, but says that didn’t speed retirement.
DeWit had six more fights, all wins, but not against anyone near Cooper’s calibre. His last opponent was Olympic nemesis Tillman, and, yes, he says, there may have been a sense of closure in that lopsided victory.
“I still think boxing is a great sport,” he says. “Is it dangerous? Yeah, it probably is. Would I want my kids doing it? Probably not. But it was great for me. It taught me so many things. It got me notoriety and opened a lot of doors.”
If there is a silver lining, a positive emerging from that crushing Olympic loss, it’s that it hardened deWit’s already formidable work ethic.
Earl Wilson recalls a conversation with the young boxer a few years into his legal career. The veteran lawyer stumbled upon deWit hunkered down in his office late one evening, poring over an impaired driving case. DeWit had handled so many similar cases, he could have offered a solid defence in his sleep. Instead, Wilson said, “he was burning the midnight oil.”
“He said it was like boxing. ‘Why do I prepare? It’s the fear of losing.’ He said whenever you lose a fight, you continually second-guess yourself. It’s not a private moment. It’s public. People are paying money to watch you.”
Wilson said he believes that silver “still smarts” and informs deWit’s approach to the courtroom.
“His preparation is actually astounding. I think very much his boxing career, in terms of how dedicated he had to be and how driven he was to be the best . . . is just part of his DNA. It carries on with him in the practice of law.”
“The world is filled with people who are content to be second best,” Wilson notes. “Willie is not one of them.”