Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World

Service with me Rachel Naylor. This week we're bringing you programmes about Cuba because

it's the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This year Cuba lifted a 60-year

ban on professional boxing. Before then, any Cuban amateur boxes wanting to turn pro

had to risk everything in order to defect. I've been speaking to Mike Perez who escaped

thanks to Mexican gangsters, a fishing boat and an Irish promoter. It's a stormy night

in December 2007 and Mike Perez, an amateur Cuban boxer, is on a fishing boat somewhere

between Cuba and Mexico. This is his third attempt at leaving Cuba and things aren't

looking good. It's a journey that's supposed to take hours, but he's been on board for

two days. We don't know the water, we don't know the food, the boat couldn't swim because

the wave was too high, we really was just waiting to see if we die or we survive.

Mike, born as Michael Perez Perez, grew up in Sancti Spiritus in Central Cuba. He started

boxing when he was just four years old. He had no idea how hard it would be. This was

Fidel Castro's communist Cuba, and President Castro took boxing very seriously, even for

four years old. On day one, Mike had to go for a run at five o'clock in the morning.

So I come back home and I said to my dad, I don't want to be a boxer anymore. It wasn't

like, well, you know, I have no choice but to stick with it.

And fortunately for Cuba, Mike did as he was told. And thanks to his intense training

regime, by 14, he was so good he was boxing internationally. And this meant Mike got

to leave Cuba. Unlike normal citizens, he was subject to travel restrictions.

For the time I get out of Cuba, I went to France and I get in love with, you know,

sneakers, the chocolate. I just tasted it and I was like, Jesus, crazy, look at this.

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