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Rat Bastards: Roberto Medina

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Roberto Medina, a hard-charging lightweight fighting out of St. Petersburg, Florida, in the mid-1980s, could never escape himself. No, not even the transformative world of boxing—where self-actualization and reinvention are more than just catchpenny terms—could keep his past at bay. When his career as a journeyman hit its peak—a nationally-televised loss to Olympic gold medalist Meldrick Taylor—it also left him at rock bottom. Again. That was when a small squad of detectives handcuffed him in his dressing room after the fight and the newswires revealed the truth about Medina: his real name was John E. Garcia and he was an escaped convict from Denver, Colorado, with a prolix rap sheet (charges ranging from B&E to battery to criminal conspiracy to forgery) to go along with a cracking left hook.