KID CHOCOLATE

One afternoon in the late 1980s, Peter Quillin tore down the street as a pack of eight elementary school boys followed behind him. They screamed at the then 7-year old as he dashed towards the step of his apartment where his mother greeted him. Which one of you wants to fight my son? Deborah Yordan asked when the children arrived. One boy stepped forward and Yorban pushed her son in front of him. Then she let the boys brawl. Punches landed, tears rolled and, by the end, they were best friends, she said. I wasn't going to let every boy jump my son, Yordan said more than a decade later. But I did let them fight, and Petey always won. Quillin's always been a fighter. He spent years fighting to survive on the streets while growing up in a rough neighborhood in Grand Rapids, Mich. Now, as a professional middleweight boxer, he invests all his energy so that he never has to return. A buzz has been building around Quillin, now 22, who goes by the name Kid Chocolate. Both borrowed and bestowed, he got the name from a Puerto Rican trainer in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich. The man called him Kid Chocolate because of his resemblance to the 1930s Cuban fighter, Eligio Sardinias-Montalbo, who fought under that name. Half Cuban, Quillin adopted the name as his own, and though he is well shy of his namesakes 131-career wins, he's garnering attention with his mix of strength and slickness, both reminiscent of his namesake. Quillin's battles haven't always been inside the ring. His father, a Mariel Cuban, went to prison for money laundering when he was eight. His mother turned to welfare to support Quillin and his three brother. The family's poverty made Quillin thin-skinned. He was embarrassed to buy groceries with food stamps and hated sharing clothes with his brothers. Any criticism caused him to raise his fists. I was already unfortunate, he said. I didn't have a lot of things. I was angry about that and anything could set me off. Colin Morgan. An immigrant from Guyana, Morgan had worked trained Andrew Lewis, a welterweight world champion, and Larry Donald, a heavyweight who fought former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe in the 1990s. He saw potential in Quillin.Athletes like Petey come up every now and then, he said. Like in basketball, everyone's looking for the next Michael Jordan or Allen Iverson a kid who can really shine. Every one in boxing is looking for the next Oscar de la Hoya or Sugar Ray Leonard. I think I've seen that in Pete. Most of the boxing people in New York have the same opinion.Pete say's..You know, I am Kid Chocolate.To validate his boast, he picked up Bert Sugar's book The 100 Greatest Boxers of All Time from a table near a window that looked out on Centre Street. He flipped inside to the page of his namesake.The dude said I look like this guy, he said pointing to an image of a bare-chested, dark-skinned man standing in a boxing ring. Like Quillin, the man is lean, long and athletic with a round, youthful face. I do look like this guy. That's why I'm keeping his name alive.