Boxing: Kindelã¡n Ready to Retire As Winner

Like Amir Khan, Mario Kindelan is likely to be bidding farewell to the amateur sport after they reprise last year's Olympic lightweight final at Bolton Wanderers' Reebok Stadium tomorrow night. But whereas Khan is heading for a lucrative professional career, the great Cuban is ready to hang up his gloves for good.

The 18-year-old Khan says beating Kindelan would leave him with no further incentive to remain an amateur, but the 33-year-old Cuban has postponed his retirement, announced after winning his second Olympic gold in the Athens games, to face Khan again and, no doubt, to bring much-needed money into the coffers of Cuban boxing.

"I planned to leave the sport after the Olympics," said Kindelan yesterday, speaking through an interpreter at a press conference to publicise the ITV-televised England v Cuba match that will raise funds for Khan's club, Bury ABC. "But I was informed Amir wanted to fight me again. Amir is the reason I chose to come back.

"I said before the Olympics I would not lose again. I promised Cuba not to lose any more fights, and I won't."

Kindelan's success in the red and white vest of his homeland has made him a national hero, and he boasts three consecutive world championship gold medals to add to his Olympic triumphs.

With some justification Angel Iglesias, the head of the Cuban team, said: "He's not going to retire as a loser whatever happens on Saturday. We know that it's maybe Kindelan's last fight and every man in England should want to see it."

For the better part of a decade Kindelan has been regarded as one of the world's outstanding amateur boxers and he could have been a multimillionaire had he chosen to leave his communist homeland and fight as a professional.

There are echoes of the great Cuban heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson, who rejected huge financial inducements to face Muhammad Ali in the 1970s, as Kindelan explains why he would never have forsaken his homeland in search of the US dollar.

"Yes," he answers with a shy smile when asked if he had ever been tempted by the riches of professionalism. "But it is very important for me to stay in Cuba. I love my family, and my family means more to me than all the millions in the world.

"Boxing has brought me fame and the chance to travel all over the world. The sport has been good to me."

Years ago he comfortably defeated the Puerto Rican Felix Trinidad, who will receive a massive paycheck for fighting Ronald "Winky" Wright in Las Vegas this weekend. In Bolton Kindelan will take nothing more than his living expenses.

Kindelan confesses he is "tired" and ready for a quieter life with his wife Oralvis, who will give birth to their third child in June, although it seems inevitable he will remain committed to the formidable Cuban boxing tradition in a coaching capacity.

He has already been approached to help the English Amateur Boxing Association groom a new generation of young boxers as the sport tries to build on the surge of interest generated by Khan's Olympic silver medal.

Kindelan was making all the noises the promoters of Saturday's fight were hoping to hear. "Amir needs to stay disciplined and humble," he said. "Then he will be a big champion any way he chooses to go."