Ferdie Pacheco

Ferdie Pacheco is the subject of the film "Ferdie Pacheco: The World of the Fight Doctor" created by Daphne Wynn Boyd.

Ferdie Pacheco
at ringside

Ferdie Pacheco is a pharmacist, doctor, boxing analyst, novelist, screenwriter, and artist.

He has worked as a cornerman for 12 champions. In 1977 after a 15-year stint as Muhammad Ali's doctor, he left Ali to begin his work as a boxing analyst for CBS. In 1980 he signed with NBC to do the Moscow Olympics and stayed on for ten years as their boxing consultant and analyst.

He free-lanced with major boxing shows with Showtime-TV, and did Cable-TV with Sunshine/ Prime Ticket-TV, as well as shows in Spanish with Univision-TV. He is now retired as TV analyst but writes for THE SHOWTIME Website.

Emmys: 1977 CBS Ali-Spinks: NBC 1989-90 for producing-writing-reporting on Ali-Zaire Revisited.

As an Artist...

Round Midnight: Dexter Gordon
Painting, Ferdie Pacheco

His imaginative use of color and design and his aggressive use of vivid, slashing, colorful patterns exude a sense of strength that are bold, gutsy, personal statements of a man who has immersed himself fully in life. Pacheco has the rare ability to transfer these experiences onto canvas. It is this ability that earned him the Gold Medal and First Prize in Tonneins, France: the First Prize, Best Colorist at Musee Du Luxembourg.

Pacheco was seeing operations and autopsies as a child and at the same time he was starting his first paintings. Pacheco helped finance his medical education by contributing his cartoons to major national magazines.

Pacheco's deftly designed, intensely colored pieces are abstract conceptions reflective of rich life experiences and profound academic curiosity. The anatomical integrity of painted images stems from expertise gained through medical training. His other motifs were affected by art-historical influences-specifically Vincent Van Gogh, Mexicans, Tamayo and Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo, the Germans, George Grosz and Oscar Kokoscka, and the Americans, Thomas Hart Benton and Fletcher Martin.

Ferdie Pacheco knew little Havana way before the retro-Cuban wave. As a young doctor, transplanted from his native Ybor City in Tampa, he set up his practice on South West Eighth Street the year the early Cuban exiles began streaming into the city.

In their stories, he found echoes of his own family's immigrant roots. His father was the Cuban-born son of a Spanish consul on the island. These were stories that would stock his repertoire of detail- laden, human anecdotes and inspire splashes of colors that he would transfer onto canvas.

Currently, Pacheco's work is selling is featured in Ybor City at the Pacheco Gallery in Centro Ybor Plaza.

His published books include, "Fight Doctor; Muhammad Ali, A View From The Corner"; "Renegade Lightening" written with Robert Skimins; "Ybor City Chronicles"; "The Columbia Restaurant Cookbook" written with Adela Gonzmart; "Pacheco's Art of Ybor City" a coffee table book of his art; "The Christmas Eve Cookbook" co-authored with his wife; "The 12 Greatest Rounds of the Century"; and "Pacheco's Art of The Cubans in Exile".

Although Dr. Pacheco's commitment to his writing and sports continue, as evidenced by his involvement in both areas, painting remains his passion. And his popularity is fast spreading to other countries within the Art World.

Dr. Pacheco was born in Tampa, Florida, but has an ancestry deeply rooted in Spain. He is happily married to Luisita Sevilla, noted Flamenco artist and photographer, who also manages his art and types his manuscripts. They live in Miami.