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Thirty-five minutes after his public workout was scheduled to begin, Celestino Caballero climbs into the ring at Cabbagetown Gym and struts to the centre of the canvas.
The training session was one of Caballero's last before he and Steve (The Canadian Kid) Molitor meet in a title unification bout Friday night, and the Panamanian wouldn't begin without his music. So he dispatched someone to fetch a CD, and moments later a reggaeton rhythm thumped over the gym's loud speakers.
The vocalist rapped in a high-pitched Spanish staccato about lefts, rights and winning fights, and if his voice sounded familiar, it should have.
It was Caballero, a WBA junior featherweight champion who moonlights as a reggaeton artist in his native Panama, performing under his nickname "Pelenchin" (pronounced peh-len-CHEEN), which means "street fighter."
Friday night at Casino Rama he plans to keep making music in the ring against Molitor, the IBF champ. And when asked his strategy he had a simple answer.
"(I'll) go out there and hit him hard," the 32-year-old Caballero said through an interpreter.
Molitor, a Sarnia native who lives in Mississauga, spent yesterday at his training camp in Montreal. He's scheduled to arrive in Toronto today, which left Caballero alone in Toronto to hype the fight until tomorrow's news conference.
Caballero enjoyed the media spotlight of the public workout but kept part of it private, asking photographers not to film segments of the session.
But Caballero, who has 21 knockouts in 30 wins, still couldn't hide his punching power. With the cameras off he stalked his trainer Jorge Cerpa, launching hard combinations while Cerpa skittered around the ring wearing target mitts and a look of sheer terror. After three rounds Cerpa smoothed his comb-over back into place and left the ring looking relieved.
Later Caballero threw a few verbal combinations at Molitor, who is undefeated in 28 bouts.
"He's a great champion but I want him to demonstrate that to me, and fight like a real man," he said.
Until yesterday the pre-fight hype had been unusually polite. On a media conference call last week each man praised his opponent's professionalism and promised to save his hostility for the ring.
But yesterday Caballero, a world-class braggart in his songs, finally brought some of that bravado to this promotion, dismissing Molitor's slick-but-safe ring style.
"I think he's afraid I'll break his face," he said. "He looks like a pretty boy."
Caballero has won 11 straight since dropping a 12-round decision to Ricardo Cordoba more than four years ago. He calls himself a "good" champion, but says unifying the 122-pound titles against Molitor would make him one of Panama's all-time ring greats. Among Panamanian fighters, only Roberto Duran, who held two lightweight belts in the late 1970s, has unified a title.
"This title was denied to me two times, but because God doesn't sleep and I believe in Him, here's the opportunity," he said.
