Paul Spadafora's rise to world champion, fall from grace chronicled in 'Fighting Till The End'

Paul Spadafora was back where he believes he belongs, wearing gloves and working in and around the ring with aspiring fighters last month at Tom Yankello’s World Class Boxing Gym in Ambridge.

The former IBF lightweight champion from McKees Rocks, who now resides in Las Vegas, returned to his hometown for a few weeks as part of his new, post-prizefighting career path.

Spadafora wants to be a trainer, to impart his ring expertise along with words of wisdom learned from a lifetime of battling his addiction to alcohol and drugs that destroyed his career and nearly his life. Still, he has difficulty separating his troubles from his triumphs.

“It’s good to be home, but it’s still harder for me with my addiction,” said Spadafora, who said he was celebrating six months of sobriety. “What I’ve got to give, you can’t even make it up. There’s no way, if you love fighting, I can’t make you awesome — because I learned from the best. I don’t watch TV. I watch boxing. You need to learn it. I hope I run into somebody who wants to fight like me. But you can’t make people fight.”

The story of Spadafora’s rise to become the city’s first world champion since Billy Conn and subsequent downward spiral is the subject of a biography, “Fighting Till The End,” by Chris Scarnati. Published by Creative Texts Publishing, the book is available on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com, with an audiobook through SoundCloud and iTunes.

"Fighting Till The End" is available on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com, with an audiobook through SoundCloud and iTunes.

After a draw against Leonard Dorin in his eighth title defense, Spadafora had a string of arrests. The most serious nearly came at the peak of his career, after shooting his then-girlfriend, Nadine Russo, in the chest near a McKees Rocks gas station in October 2003.

Even that tragedy came with a twist: Spadafora and Russo later had a son, Geno, now a 19-year-old amateur who hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps as a pro boxer. Spadafora decided to move to the desert in the summer of 2022 to help train Geno, who also works under the tutelage of Jesse Reid, one of his father’s former trainers. And, after a relationship she described as a mixture of Romeo and Juliet and Bonnie and Clyde, Paul and Nadine married last September in Italy. Nadine now calls herself Paul’s “emotional support person.”

Scarnati first captured the chaos surrounding Spadafora’s battle with alcohol and drug abuse in a story for Sports Illustrated. In doing so, Scarnati found Spadafora to be a compelling subject who wasn’t shy about sharing his trials and tribulations with devastating detail.

“I caught him in pockets of sobriety where he would tell the truth,” Scarnati told TribLive. “His candor was insane when he was clean and sober. He would just bare his soul. I couldn’t believe some of the stories. I can’t believe he’s alive, honestly.”

Scarnati’s book chronicles the childhood chaos of Spadafora’s turbulent family life that involved a father who denied paternity and died of a drug overdose and a mother, Annie, whose own addictions made for a nomadic existence that had Paul bouncing from home to home.

“I hope I portrayed Paul accurately,” said Scarnati, an English teacher and acting middle school principal in the Sto-Rox School District. “He never felt accepted. He had a dad, Silvio, who rejected him and said, ‘You’re not my kid.’ I don’t want to say it excuses Paul for what he did later, but it puts things in perspective.”

The book goes deep into detail of Spadafora’s rise through the amateur ranks and Golden Gloves, the shooting in his leg that prevented him from competing for a spot in the Olympics and caused him to switch his stance to southpaw and his relationship with his mentor, trainer PK Pecora, and how the deaths of loved ones deeply affected the fighter.

“There’s casualties in boxing,” Spadafora said. “Even though I won a world title, I’m a casualty of boxing. I don’t feel bad about it. I love boxing. I knew what it was when I got into it.”

Spadafora’s demons destroyed his career at its peak, as his alcoholism soon gave way to drug abuse, starting with snorting cocaine and then smoking crack cocaine to eventually shooting heroin and using crystal meth.

“Paul has horrible addictions,” Scarnati said. “Alcohol was the worst. It always led him to do the drugs. He almost died. Throughout all the turmoil, he remained undefeated for the longest time.”

Scarnati details how Spadafora withdrew from one fight card because of an overdose and how his alcohol and drug use between fights left him bloated before training camp and looking lethargic in major bouts.

Even so, Spadafora had a perfect record until his draw with Dorin and didn’t suffer a loss until his 50th pro bout, a majority decision defeat to Johan Perez for the WBA interim world super lightweight title in November 2013. He finished his pro career with a 49-1-1 ring record.

“Paul definitely has a story,” said Yankello, Spadafora’s longtime on-again, off-again trainer. “It’s unbelievable, the resiliency with the things that he’s been through from day one with his childhood, from getting shot in the leg to come back and winning the Ohio State Fair nine months after they told him he’d never walk again without a cane. That’s the greatness of Paul Spadafora, despite all of the trials and tribulations he tells about his addictions with drugs and alcohol.”

“Fighting Till The End” doesn’t quite accomplish that, though Spadafora’s epilogue has yet to be written. The story is told mostly through the lens of Paul and Nadine Spadafora, trainers Yankello and Reid, longtime manager Al McCauley and some family members and friends. Scarnati said he intentionally didn’t weigh in with his own views, wanting to show and not tell to allow readers to make their own determinations.

Spadafora is angered his handlers, including the late promoter Mike Acri, didn’t get him the multi-million dollar prizefight with Floyd Mayweather that he so desperately wanted. But Spadafora doesn’t take responsibility for allowing his weight to balloon between fights by binge drinking and using drugs, yet complains when they book bouts with little rest in between. He blames his poor performances on his trainers, yet he was arrested for shooting Nadine just days before he was scheduled to start working with a legendary trainer, the late Emanuel Steward.

What the book shows is that Spadafora’s fight is mostly internal, and his greatest challenger is often himself and his fight with addictions.

“Whenever bad things happen, he takes it out on himself and self-sabotages,” Nadine said. “He’s super emotional in the ring and outside of it.”

Spadafora swears he’s driven to make his final chapter one that changes his family for the better, as he’s determined to guide Geno’s boxing career while avoiding the personal pitfalls that plagued him. That’s the biggest fight of Paul Spadafora’s life, one he vows to win.

“It’s meant to be inspirational but also brutally candid about his addiction and all of the problems his alcoholism has caused,” Scarnati said. “ ‘Fighting Till the End’ really encapsulates his life. He’ll drink and do something bad then feel immediately horrible about it. He does get embarrassed and feels remorse.

“With everything Paul did, he was fine talking about it. He’s insecure. He wants people to like him. He loved being the ‘Pittsburgh Kid.’ He loves his city. Paul never cared for fame and fortune as much as you’d think. He really wants his story told. He wants this book to be a teaching tool for those who are struggling, to do something important in their lives. He wants to be remembered for defeating his demons and coming out on top.”