John Beale, Post-Gazette Boxer Paul Spadafora is sworn in at his sentencing last week before Judge Jeffery Manning. At left is Spadafora's attorney, William Difenderfer. Click photo for larger image.

The fighter in the courtroom looked nothing at all like a fighter. Gone was the pretense of his street smarts; he looked, to borrow words from the fighter's older brother, like a "lost little boy." The fighter, at 29, wore a peach-colored shirt, tucked messily into flapping beige pants, and his little dark eyes stared up at the judge's bench.

He stood, hands temporarily uncuffed, and told the judge, "I want to say I'm very sorry for what happened that night." The fighter's soft voice quivered, struggling to fill the courtroom, which extended far and high in every direction around him. The very appearance of this 5-foot-9, pale waif seemed ridiculous, except that Paul Spadafora now faced sentencing for a crime suggesting very much the fury of a brute. He continued, pleading for lenience: "If you can just give me this little chance, I'll make you so proud. I'll make this whole city proud."

Spadafora can scarcely recall the night -- whatever it was that happened that night, friends say obliquely -- that triggered everything since. He drank too much that night, as he did too many other nights. He stayed out too late. He fought with his girlfriend, Nadine Russo, then struggled with her outside a gas station, then shot her in the chest. The police initially charged Spadafora with attempted homicide. That was Oct. 26, 2003. Roughly three months later, Spadafora proposed to Russo, who was finally recovered and out of the hospital. On Dec. 1, 2004, Russo gave birth to the couple's first child, Geno. Then, last Wednesday, Russo sat on a wooden chair in an Allegheny County courtroom, crying about the future of the fighter who almost killed her, and the fighter she still loves.

The court benches flooded to capacity on the day of Spadafora's sentencing, and the room grew into a mosaic of people, some there out of love, some there for support, some there simply to observe the gut-wrenching spectacle of a man at rock bottom. Pittsburgh's boxing champion was now broke, alcohol-addicted and awaiting punishment for a crime just as famous as his career. "Paul had this lifelong goal -- to become a world champion," Spadafora's brother, Harry, said. "And it's crazy, he actually achieved it. Now there's nothing behind it. Nothing behind it ... except disgrace."

It's clear, only in retrospect, that this rock bottom was inevitable. Spadafora earned more than $2 million as a professional boxer, and for almost four years, he controlled the International Boxing Federation lightweight title. Pittsburgh boxing crackerjacks called him the city's best fighter in a half-century, and boy, what a story, what an incredible story. Spadafora, despite all his vices, kept rising and rising and rising ... from a young amateur with a gimp -- the product of a gunshot wound during a police chase -- to one of Pittsburgh's most unlikely celebrities, somebody who could drink two fifths of whiskey in one night without toppling. In the end, though, Spadafora's unrelenting success dulled the pleas of those who watched the fighter slowly ruin himself.

Spadafora began boxing at 11, he began drinking alcohol at 13. He's been addicted to both ever since. His life, when not squared off by a ring, rarely bested hell. He woke up one morning, at age 9, to learn his father had died of a drug overdose. Harry had found the body in a closet. Spadafora then moved in with his mother. Some days, he returned from school to find the front door padlocked because the rent hadn't been paid. As a young pro, Spadafora always said he came from McKees Rocks, but that served only as an artificial identity. He came from everywhere. He lived in Sheraden, the North Hills, Millvale. In his mid-teens, Spadafora spent weeks living under an abandoned front porch, sleeping with his dog, a Doberman, for warmth.

Chaos became his equilibrium, which is why Spadafora wed himself to a sport neither nurturing nor natural. In the beginning, Spadafora's rage coexisted strangely with his boxing career, so strangely that some of his handlers later suggested withholding the fighter from drug and alcohol rehab because, according to one, "If you civilize him, he won't be a great fighter anymore." Everything about Spadafora's life screamed mania. At age 15, he traveled to a premier amateur tournament, lost his match, returned home and drank 24 beers in one sitting. Then, drunk and delirious, he waited to die.

He dropped out of school in ninth grade to become a champion; he even tattooed boxing gloves around his neck, so that every morning, when he stared at his bare chest in the mirror, the dream ate at him. When boxing yielded disappointment, Spadafora fell into a cavity of despair, but mostly, boxing brought the fighter elation, a release he could find nowhere else.

"The ring was his cathedral," said Jimmy Cvetic, a longtime Pittsburgh-area promoter. At 135 pounds, Spadafora lacked the brutish style of his opponents. He was simply quicker, with reflexes that allowed him to duck the most punishing punches. He was boxing's equivalent of a singles hitter, and his defensive style, upon turning pro in September 1995, served him perfectly. In 39 professional fights to date, he never lost, with only one tie.

SPADAFORA TRAINED AND WON, won and drank, drank and trained. Between fights, he sometimes gained 30 pounds from drinking binges. Some nights, he'd hop from bar to bar with his friends from McKees Rocks, until realizing -- while beer buzzed through his veins at sunrise -- that he needed to begin his 7 a.m. training regimen. Some interpreted the concurrences of nightlife mayhem and under-the-lights dominance as a sign that, yes, Spadafora knew exactly how to handle himself. He knew his limits. He was street smart.

	Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Paul Spadafora at a gym in Monroeville, where he was training for a shot at the IBF title in 1999. Click photo for larger image.

But that was a lie, even when so prudently disguised, because street smarts implied a survival instinct, and Spadafora instinctively sought destruction. Spadafora kept himself rooted in McKees Rocks, one of the region's most hardscrabble towns, even when his boxing managers and trainers begged him to leave and train elsewhere. He lost thousands in property transactions, and spent thousands more on shoes and cars. He bounced from woman to woman, fathering children with two of them. Even Spadafora's naive generosity caused problems: He bailed drug dealers, childhood friends, out of prison. He paid his mother's rent for almost a decade.

Spadafora managed his life with childish absentmindedness, but people loved him, and gladly let his faults slide into their blind spots. He relinquished his IBF title in June 2003 to fight in a higher weight class, junior welterweight. He degenerated quickly from there, experimenting for the first time with serious drugs such as cocaine and Ecstasy, and then, finally, losing the last of his wits on that October night in front of a gas station. And now, his life tethered to a chain of losses, that seemed about the reason Spadafora sat in a courtroom Wednesday, awaiting the cast of his immediate future.

After a few minutes of discourse, Judge Jeffrey Manning handed down his clement decision: he recommended Spadafora for a six-month, military-style boot camp in central Pennsylvania, contingent on the fighter's acceptance into the program. Months earlier, hoping to avoid lengthy jail time, Spadafora had pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, reduced from the original attempted homicide. Though he'd spent roughly two months prior to his Wednesday sentence locked in a second-floor cell at the Allegheny County Jail, he now faced the tantalizing prospect of soon reclaiming his career, his family and even his own direction -- things the fighter thought long lost. Hands cuffed once again, Spadafora left the courtroom, and a half-dozen cameras reflexively followed the fighter as he walked down the hallway, quietly engaged in the fight of his life.

FEW INHABITED THE DARK McKees Rocks street on Oct. 26, 2003, but by the definition of those who did -- including the police officers eventually called to the scene -- it was Sunday morning. For Spadafora, it was still Saturday night. Here, at 801 Island Ave., under the dim light of a BP gas station, across the street from a strip club, Spadafora shot his future fiancee minutes before 6 a.m. He was too drunk to know she'd been shot.

John Beale, Post-Gazette Outside court last week, Nadine Russo continues to stand by her man. Click photo for larger image.

When police asked Spadafora to report his story, he told them he'd heard two or three gunshots from an unknown source and location. He later told a witness Russo was shot in a robbery. He told friends he lost his temper with somebody exiting the strip club, prompting the gunfire. All stories were untrue.

"He was so wasted," Russo, 22, said, "he didn't have a clue."

Drugs and alcohol ignited most of Spadafora's troubles, and because the fighter was the textbook addict -- "He could get addicted to popcorn," a former rehab counselor said -- Spadafora was always knotted to trouble. Sessions with counselors and in rehab failed to ease the addiction. Even after posting $50,000 bail following the Oct. 26 incident, Spadafora kept drinking, directly violating the terms of his release. In September 2004, officers in Mercer County charged him with reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct, the results of a drinking binge.

"He won't ever quit," Russo said. "Paul will drink starting at 7 p.m., then he'll go out, the bar will close, he'll go to after-hours, he'll go to a store and get a case of beer. He'll be up until he literally passes out. Paul don't know nothing but boxing and drinking."

On the last night Pittsburgh knew the fighter foremost as a rags-to-riches paradigm, Spadafora partied as usual, at a pace few could keep up with. This time, however, when he sobered up, the terrain of his existence had drastically re-formed. "The Pittsburgh Kid" swapped fame for infamy.

The night started on Oct. 25, when Spadafora and Russo drove in the fighter's Hummer H2 -- equipped with $2,000 rims -- to a slummy McKees Rocks bar chosen for its cheap drinks. They didn't stay long, because Russo's mood turned sour -- Spadafora's drinking had long irritated her, and the fighter, downing drink after drink, wasn't deterred. They jumped to another bar. Spadafora promised Russo they'd drive home thereafter. They didn't. Instead, they drove one another mad.

Finally heading back to Mc-Kees Rocks hours later, Russo, in the driver's seat, swung the Hummer over a concrete median only yards from the BP station. After she pulled into the gas station, Spadafora exited the car and noticed two flat tires. The tension from the evening erupted into screaming. "You bitch!" the fighter said.

He cursed at Russo as he walked away from her, and Russo, desperate to gain his attention, pulled Spadafora's gun from her purse. She never let Spadafora carry his gun when he drank. "So I was all irritated," Russo recalled. "I was crying, 'I just wish I would die. I can't take this anymore.' "

Spadafora abruptly turned around. "What are you doing?" he hollered. Russo, suddenly face-to-face with the fighter, threatened to shoot him. "But I was just playing around," she later added. "You know, just to make him mad. It's not like I would actually do it. But Paul was all drunk, and he thought I might actually shoot. So he was grabbing me, trying to get the gun."

Then, it happened. The fighter and his girlfriend struggled for the gun, and when Spadafora gripped the trigger, one microsecond muscle twitch sent one shot from the .38-caliber revolver into Russo's upper chest, just an inch below her right breast. She staggered backward and collapsed.

Russo, then and now, called the shooting an accident. Observers who knew Spadafora only as a caricature of his rap sheet doubted such an assertion, but police and prosecutors never found evidence disproving Russo's story. Just know this: After Russo stumbled to the ground and spilled blood before sunrise that Sunday morning, and after medics swept her by ambulance to Allegheny General Hospital, and after Spadafora posted bail and headed back home with his brother -- that's when Spadafora finally broke down and cried.

"He is faced now with a huge crossroads in his life," Spadafora's longtime attorney, William Difenderfer, told the courtroom last Wednesday. He spoke slowly, emphasizing every word. "Paul's sober life is actually one of a kid who loves people, somebody who is totally nonviolent," Difenderfer said in an interview before the incident. "He drinks to total excess and becomes an idiot. Add that to his environment, and problems happen. But when he's sober, he's the kindest person in the world."

So now, speaking at the sentencing, he believed in the fighter. As a betting man, Difenderfer told the courtroom, he'd bet on Spadafora turning his life around, and it sounded like true confidence, not wishful thinking.

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS fighting career, Spadafora spawned a circus: He employed trainers and managers and promoters; he allowed street friends to tag along for the ride; he met women -- lots of women; then, T-shirt salesmen hopped on board, and sat right next to corporate sponsors and nutritionists and physicians and anybody else looking for the ride of a lifetime. Finally, when the crowd assembled, Spadafora's career became a living, breathing, disastrous enterprise.

John Beale, Post-Gazette Facing boot camp instead of hard time, Spadafora appeared relieved as he talked with reporters after his sentencing last week. Click photo for larger image.

In the best times, the people closest to Spadafora coexisted. In the worst times, they made Spadafora's existence a miserable soap opera, which some suggest amplified his alcohol abuse. Spadafora's first trainer, Tommy Yankello, fought constantly with Spadafora's second trainer, Jesse Reid, added to the group in 1999. ("There were times I wanted to kill that S.O.B.," Reid said of Yankello.) Tension similarly abraded the relationship between Yankello and manager Al McCauley, who once, in 2000, engaged in a massive fistfight over their differences. ("Al is a bad guy," Yankello said. "That's a fact.")

Picking sides became impossible when balancing words against words and spite against spite, and Spadafora grew disgusted with the rancor among those closest to him. The fighter lived in a gangland of inescapable drama. When he struggled to take care of himself, he learned, mercilessly, how others depended on him. After Spadafora shot his girlfriend, Spadafora's brother, Harry, suffered a nervous breakdown and temporarily left his wife. Those in the fighter's boxing camp argued about what went wrong, with only one rule of engagement -- they never pointed fingers at themselves. When Spadafora went to jail last December -- the punishment for violating the rules of a halfway house where he stayed -- the circus continued without the ringmaster.

In jail, where Spadafora spent two months awaiting his sentencing, the fighter made decisions. Out of money, he stopped paying monthly child support to Crystal Conner, 25, the mother of his first child. Still, he wanted a relationship with Conner's daughter, Giana, 2. He also wanted to marry Russo, and soon. The couple hopes for an official ceremony, perhaps held at boot camp, within the next one or two months.

"This whole time I've been in jail," Spadafora said by telephone from the Allegheny County Jail, "it's been the best possible thing for me. I needed to get ahold of my drinking problem. I needed to slow down. I was going way too fast, and this was the way to do it. I think it will all be a blessing.

"I'm gonna be back on top, but I have to take it one day at a time."

He wanted, in short, to detach himself from his past, and forget about old screw-ups and old addictions and even, in some cases, old friends. He hoped, once and for all, to kill the drama of his life, and he prayed he could find stability before he found yet another way to get lost in the rubble of old deeds.

But so rarely for Spadafora does the praying stop the jolts. Hours after Spadafora's sentencing, Conner, the fighter's former girlfriend, claimed to be 3 1/2 months pregnant with another of his children. "Aug. 9 it's due," Conner said. "Paul knows it's his kid. I'm not sure what he tells Nadine, but we can get a DNA test. Nadine just wants to believe they're just this picture-perfect couple, and she's the only one who Paul loves. But what's she gonna do when I pop his child out on Aug. 9?"

Both Russo and Spadafora quickly denied Conner's assertion. "She's deliberately trying to mess up Paul's life," Russo said. "Absolutely nuts," Spadafora said. "She's just jealous I'm with Nadine right now."

Once Spadafora finally returns to freedom, his opportunities will be as dangerous as they are promising, largely because the demons -- both internal and external -- will besiege him once more. The chaos around him and the chaos within him will ensure his rehabilitation becomes a daily project. Given the choice, Spadafora aims to assist underprivileged children, and equip them with some of the lessons the fighter learned too late, and perhaps some of the lessons the fighter still must learn. He also dreams of boxing again -- at the earliest, he'll return to the ring by late autumn.

There is an opportunity. Spadafora can reclaim his career, his riches and his reputation. Upon release from boot camp, though, Spadafora must again battle addiction and his own instinct for destruction -- those are the mammoth pillars of nature the undefeated fighter has yet to defeat.

"I just want to put all that behind me," Spadafora said, his words soft and pensive. For the fighter in prison, the future was perfect, but for all of its ruinous possibilities.