Alexis Arguello's Death, Prefigured

Alexis Arguello, the Nicaraguan boxing legend who was found dead early Wednesday of a gunshot wound to the chest, led a demon-haunted life that he nearly ended by his own hand 25 years ago. From a 1985 Sports Illustrated story: In 1984, when Alexis Arguello was 32, he sat on his boat in the ocean one morning and stared down the black shaft of a loaded automatic pistol. It was as good a place as any to die. A.J. sat across from him, crying, begging him not to do it. Arguello cried too, saying that he must. There was no other sound except the ocean lapping at the boat, on which was painted THE CHAMP. Arguello ached from the contradiction of his life, the way it lurched between opposites. Could it be that the distance between opposites was-nothing? So much seemed incomprehensible. No cause was pure, no motive clean, no external thing could be trusted. Everything a man needed to believe in in order to feel secure, life could rub his face again and again until he understood its opposite ...