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Hartford boxer Richie Rivera was stripped of his title after testing positive for a substance that wasn’t banned. Then a lawyer heard his story and helped.

  • Richie Rivera has a photo and anchor hanging at Hartford...

    Brad Horrigan / Hartford Courant

    Richie Rivera has a photo and anchor hanging at Hartford Boxing Center, in homage to his "Popeye the Sailor Man" nickname.

  • Richie "Popeye the Sailor Man" Rivera trains a young boxer...

    Brad Horrigan / Hartford Courant

    Richie "Popeye the Sailor Man" Rivera trains a young boxer at Hartford Boxing Center.

  • Richie "Popeye The Sailor Man" Rivera of Hartford, CT reacts...

    John Woike / Hartford Courant

    Richie "Popeye The Sailor Man" Rivera of Hartford, CT reacts after knocking down Jaime "Zarko" Solorio of San Quinton, Mexico at the 2:30 mark of the 8th and final round during the Hartford Boxing Center put on the "Fight Night at the Capital" at the XFinity Theater last summer.

  • Richie "Popeye the Sailor Man" Rivera trains at Hartford Boxing...

    Brad Horrigan / Hartford Courant

    Richie "Popeye the Sailor Man" Rivera trains at Hartford Boxing Center.

  • Richie "Popeye the Sailor Man" Rivera wraps his hands at...

    Brad Horrigan / Hartford Courant

    Richie "Popeye the Sailor Man" Rivera wraps his hands at Hartford Boxing Center.

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It took only one phone call for the biggest victory of Richie Rivera’s life to become something totally different. Something that threatened to derail his entire boxing career.

Only weeks earlier, Rivera, aka “Popeye the Sailor Man,” had defeated Jaime Solorio in front of a hometown crowd at Xfinity Theatre, as part of an event he and trainer Tony Blanco had worked for months to organize. The eighth-round knockout improved Rivera’s pro record to 8-0 and earned him the American Boxing Federation Continental Americas Cruiserweight title belt, his second title in just five months. With local fans squarely behind him and key figures in the boxing world beginning to take notice, Rivera and Blanco saw all their plans playing out in front of them. Stardom for Popeye appeared within reach.

Then came the call from Mark Langlais, Connecticut’s administrator of boxing and MMA regulation. Rivera had tested positive for a banned substance and would be suspended pending an investigation.

At first, Rivera was confused. Banned substance? He wouldn’t use Tylenol to treat a headache, let alone pump himself with performance-enhancers. There must have been some sort of mistake.

He soon received a follow-up letter from Langlais, informing him that he had tested positive for lidocaine, the numbing agent sometimes used as a painkiller. The positive test had apparently been triggered by treatment Rivera had received for a cut several weeks before the fight.

Just like that, Rivera’s confusion turned to anger. He had been punished for using a substance that was applied in a hospital by a doctor. A substance that wasn’t banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency or any major sports leagues.

With the positive test, Rivera was stripped of both his victory over Solorio and his newly earned title belt and was suspended for nine months.

“It was like a smack in the face,” Rivera said recently. “It was like all my hard work just went down the drain. We trained so hard for that moment, that day.”

Blanco watched as Rivera’s disposition changed, from bright and optimistic to quiet and sullen.

“I’ve never seen him mad,” Blanco said. “But this time he was quiet, not smiling like his usual self. It was just devastating to see that.”

The suspension forced Rivera to cancel several scheduled bouts, costing him attention and momentum. Fans, who had flocked to his fights by the hundreds, reached out asking what happened. It seemed that he would spend the next nine months wondering what had gone wrong and what it might mean for his formerly promising career.

Then an acquaintance named Zach Dunn came to find him.

* * *

Richie “Popeye the Sailor Man” Rivera trains a young boxer at Hartford Boxing Center.

Sitting in the lobby of Hartford Boxing Center one night in late January, wearing gold grills, a flat-brim hat and a gentle smile, the 28-year-old Rivera shares the outline of his life story. He was born in Hartford in 1990 and spent his childhood bouncing between homes in the area, crashing on friends’ couches when necessary, before landing at an alternative high school in East Hartford. His early years, he said, featured an abusive father and an over-burdened mother, neither of whom could provide a stable home.

From as young as 3 or 4 years old, Rivera found solace in boxing, training at local gyms and fighting against older opponents. He had a knack for the sport, plus a fierce desire to improve. His thick forearms earned him the nickname “Popeye,” and he soon adopted that moniker in the ring, emerging before each fight with a pipe and a sailor’s hat.

Rivera remembers one time as a teenager when he was kicked out of his house and forced to apply for food stamps and other government services. A social services employee asked what he did for a living.

“I box,” Rivera said.

“No, what will you do for money?” the woman replied.

“I’ma box,” Rivera said.

Rivera laughs at the memory.

“She said that’s not gonna happen, it’s not gonna work,” he recalls. “And I was like, yeah it is.”

Rivera began fighting as an amateur while teaching classes and training young boxers at local gyms. In 2015, he joined Hartford Boxing Center to work with Blanco, whom he had met a year earlier. He turned pro in January 2017 and promptly won his first seven fights, six of them via knockout, while continuing to work full-time at the gym.

Along the way, he came to believe deeply in boxing’s power to help steer troubled young people in a healthy direction.

“Boxing’s a humbling sport,” Rivera said. “You come out here and you think you’re this macho man from the street and you don’t care about anybody. Most people who are brand new, they don’t say hi to anyone, they get in the ring, and they get beat up by some guys that know what they’re doing. And that humbles them.”

Rivera’s love of his sport made his suspension after the June fight all the more painful. Not only had he lost a win off his record and a belt that he felt he had rightly earned, but he had also lost the ability to do what he had done for more than 20 years: fight.

Richie “Popeye The Sailor Man” Rivera of Hartford, CT reacts after knocking down Jaime “Zarko” Solorio of San Quinton, Mexico at the 2:30 mark of the 8th and final round during the Hartford Boxing Center put on the “Fight Night at the Capital” at the XFinity Theater last summer.

“It was heartbreaking,” Rivera said. “It was hard to get back into a training regimen because when you’re suspended it’s like, what do I have to look forward to? What do I have to train for? What’s my motive? What’s going to get me going?”

As Rivera and Blanco plotted how to appeal the suspension, word spread around Hartford Boxing Center, until it reached the ears of Dunn, an attorney at Halloran Sage in downtown Hartford who had trained at the gym for several years and become friendly with Rivera. Dunn had noticed how local kids flocked to the man called Popeye and how anxiously the fighter looked out for everyone in his orbit. Now, he saw a chance to help someone who seemed forever happy to help others.

Dunn approached Rivera and Blanco, then asked his bosses whether the firm could help Rivera pro bono. They agreed, and within a week Dunn and his colleague Arnie Menchel had compiled a 150-page report. Among the findings: Lidocaine was not actually a banned or controlled substance according to state law, federal law, WADA or USADA.

“There didn’t seem to be any basis for suspension in the state of Connecticut,” Dunn said.

Dunn submitted the report to Langlais, who had made the initial decision to suspend Rivera and would now hear the appeal.

Richie Rivera has a photo and anchor hanging at Hartford Boxing Center, in homage to his “Popeye the Sailor Man” nickname.

After some back and forth, Langlais issued a compromise. Rivera’s suspension would be lifted, allowing him to fight immediately, but he would not get credit for the knockout victory over Solorio or be allowed to keep the belt he had earned. Rivera and Blanco say Langlais declined to restore the victory and the belt because Rivera had failed to disclose the injury to his eye, which had healed in time for the fight.

Reached by phone last week, Langlais said he could not comment on specifics of Rivera’s situation due to a stipulated agreement between himself and the boxer.

“He is now a fighter in good standing here, and he is more than able to go pursue his career,” Langlais said.

Asked whether he considered lidocaine to be a banned substance in Connecticut boxing, Langlais said he didn’t want to “get into that.”

For Rivera, the ruling was both exciting and disappointing. He would get to fight again but would have to start nearly from scratch just to regain a belt he had already won.

“We wanted to use that [belt] as a stepping stone to getting better opponents, better pay, maybe fighting for a better belt,” Rivera said. “Now it’s like I have to do everything all over again.”

* * *

Richie “Popeye the Sailor Man” Rivera wraps his hands at Hartford Boxing Center.

With his suspension lifted, Rivera returned to the ring Oct. 5 for a knockout win over a veteran fighter in Tijuana, Mexico, then secured another knockout on Nov. 3 to improve his official record (minus the vacated fight) to 9-0 with eight knockouts.

If Rivera hopes to become a bona fide boxing star, he’ll have to fight not only the opponents across from him but also Father Time. Boxers typically peak in their late 20s, meaning the 28-year-old Popeye can’t afford many setbacks.

“He’s got to move a little quicker at this stage of the game before it’s too late,” said John Scully, the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame fighter and trainer who remains active in the state’s boxing scene. “He can’t really afford to wait because if he goes through a normal learning process, he’ll be 30, 31 years old before he even gets a chance to fight someone credible.”

It makes sense, therefore, that Rivera and Blanco are scheduling as many fights as they can over the coming months. Rivera will fight in Charlotte, N.C. on Feb. 23, then again in March and in April. Blanco said Rivera’s popularity in the Hartford area and ability to sell tickets to his fights make him an appealing target for promoters in the area.

In Blanco’s mind, Rivera remains on a path toward stardom. The trainer speaks excitedly of signing with a major promoter and getting Rivera on TV. He brags about Rivera’s performance in sparring sessions against internationally ranked fighters and predicts he’ll eventually become Hartford’s first world champion in 30 years.

But before Rivera can prove himself on at a higher level, he has an important short-term goal in mind. He wants to get back the ABF Continental Americas Cruiserweight title that he lost when he was suspended.

“If we fight for it again, we’re going to have that passion for it,” Rivera said. “I’ma look at that belt like that’s the belt they took from us.”