GOLDEN CHILD

MINUTES before the biggest fight of his young life, 24-year-old Andrew Maynard warmed up in Jamsil Students’ Gymnasium in Seoul, South Korea and waited for his name to be called to fight the Soviet Union’s Nurmagomed Shanavazov in the light-heavyweight division’s gold medal bout of the 1988 Olympics.

As the time slowly ticked by, the Maryland native wondered what was going on in the ring as his Olympic roommate, Roy Jones Jnr, faced South Korea’s Park Si-hun in the light middleweight gold medal bout. There was no television monitor in the locker room, only the sounds from outside the door.

“He’s fighting a Korean in Korea and I’m listening to the crowd,” Maynard recalled. “If it’s ‘Ahh,’ that means the Korean is doing something to the American. If it’s ‘Uhhh,’ then it’s the American doing something to the Korean. So I’m going by that.”