In the final hours of Chicago boxer Ed Brown’s life, as he lay unconscious after taking a bullet to the head, fellow fighter Adrian Granados sat next to his hospital bed and begged Brown to keep fighting.
"I was crying my heart out (and) his eyes were flickering like he was trying to open them, and I got to hold his hand," Granados recalled, swallowing his emotion. "He was tapping my hand."
Mimicking Brown’s tap with his fingers, Granados composed himself.
"I had wiped my tears and was like, ‘Ed, have a good time up there with God, but tell him I need my little brother back,’" Granados said. "And I started talking boxing with him, like, ‘You’re in the 10th round, bro. You have this fight won. Just keep sticking and moving.’
"On my way out, I chanted, ‘Bad boy, Ed Brown! And still undefeated!’ I was happy I at least had that last moment with him before he left us."
Brown, an unbeaten welterweight fighter bound for stardom, died Dec. 4 after being shot near Kedzie Avenue and Warren Boulevard, blocks from the Garfield Park Golden Dome Fieldhouse where he and Granados trained together. The fatal incident marked the eighth time in Brown’s short life he had been shot. He was 25.
"Ed Brown was like my little brother," said Granados, 27. "I miss him dearly."
Brown’s memory remains never more than a few jabs away. Granados is dedicating his Saturday night fight to Brown, a Showtime main event against former four-division world champion Adrien Broner in Cincinnati.
Every time Granados climbed into the familiar ring to train the past two months, he saw Brown’s gloves hanging from the ceiling next to Brown’s trunks and shoes in a makeshift tribute. They symbolize the drive Brown embodied as a boxer and the discipline Granados always demanded of himself to stay safe in a city where danger wrecks too many young lives.
"I’d always tell Ed, ‘Come hang out with me,’" Granados said. "I wanted to be a positive influence. I couldn’t save him but I wanted to help."
Dedicating his fight for a friend
Chicagoan Adrian Granados has dedicated his Showtime fight Saturday to the memory of Ed Brown, a fellow boxer who died Dec. 4 of a gunshot wound. (Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune)
Chicagoan Adrian Granados has dedicated his Showtime fight Saturday to the memory of Ed Brown, a fellow boxer who died Dec. 4 of a gunshot wound. (Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune)
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Every boxer needs a helping hand, like the one that guided Granados into the sport as a sophomore at St. Joseph High School. He was an undersized, 5-foot-9 guard playing basketball in legendary coach Gene Pingatore’s program, in the same class as future pros Demetri McCamey and Evan Turner.
One day during conditioning, Granados saw a history teacher named Peter Hannon jogging after a boxing lesson he gave students. Involved in three scuffles in the first two months of school, the 15-year-old Granados thought punching a bag represented a smarter way to channel his adolescent aggression.
"So Adrian asked me if he could come down, and I showed him the basics — he was a natural," said Hannon, now a faculty member at Lewis University. "I said, ‘Have your parents give me a call.’"
A phone call was made, the connection clear.
"When I started boxing, I stopped being a knucklehead," Granados said. "My high school sweetheart was boxing."
Two months later, after Hannon hooked him up with trainer Rico Gonzalez, Granados won a state tournament. Within the year, he staged his first big fight at a union hall in the city. Along the way, after beating a 27-year-old, the charismatic teenager’s reputation began to spread.
By the time Granados became the Golden Gloves national champion in 2009, en route to a 75-10 amateur record, he had fulfilled the goal of making his family proud.
"My father is the reason I wanted to be a boxer," Granados said. "We grew up (in Pilsen/Little Village) watching Julio Cesar Chavez like every other Mexican family. I’d be the little kid in the corner imitating every little move, doing double hooks and wearing the red headband. Now, my family is Team Granados."
Jose Rene, Adrian’s father, provides PR advice and overall guidance. Gloria, his mother, offers daily nutritional advice, such as how to make Brussels sprouts taste good to a boxer whose weight hovers around 147 pounds. Vidal, 24, plays "devil’s advocate," accompanying Adrian socially and making sure his big brother gets eight hours of sleep.
The Granados family structure played no small role in keeping Adrian out of harm’s way growing up, his only encounter with gangs coming when thugs slashed his face with a bottle in a mugging. A scar on Granados’ nose serves as a constant reminder.
"I was raised around gangs and violence and lived through it," he said.
So why stay so near it? Every time someone offers Granados a chance to train elsewhere, away from the inherent risks of Chicago’s West Side, he declines. He loves everything about the Garfield Park Fieldhouse gym, one of those lived-in places where the padding on the weight benches requires duct tape and the odor carries a whiff of hard work.
"This is my home," Granados said. "I want to be a positive story out of Chicago because of all the negativity we’re dealing with now. I take a lot of responsibility in showing Hispanic kids, the Asian community, black kids, minority kids that if you stay focused and dedicated, you can do anything you want.
"Winning this fight would change my life."
Not to mention honor a dear friend’s.
dhaugh@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @DavidHaugh
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