Interview: Tony Ayala

An editor at Gear magazine read that Tony Ayala, a boxer who was serving serious time in prison for rape, was about to be released and intended to resume his boxing career. So who better to send to San Antonio, Texas, to meet with Ayala, fresh from the lock-up, than me? I took the assignment under the condition that we meet for the interviews in his lawyer's office, and I checked into a hotel under an assumed name. And while I usually dislike a Q & A format for a profile, I found the way Ayala answered questions, at turns angry, defensive and sulky, to be particularly revealing.