Many Happy Returns for Robert Guerrero, Family in Comeback

There are many happy returns these days for three-time world boxing champion Robert "The Ghost" Guerrero, the least of which will be his reappearance in the ring Friday night in Las Vegas.

The former IBF featherweight and super featherweight champion from Gilroy, Calif., is celebrating his main event status in Friday's "Solo Boxeo Tecate" card against Roberto Arrieta at the Tropicana Hotel Pavilion. But his wife, Casey, may be closing in on a victory that will dwarf anything her husband will ever accomplish with his fists.

[Editor's note: Robert Guerrero defeated Robert Arrieta with a TKO 29 seconds into the 8th round. This story was written prior to Friday night's fight.]

Who is the greater fighter in the family?

The Ghost (25-1-1, 17 KOs), one of boxing's rising stars, is convinced it is his wife, whose agonizing three-year battle against acute lymphocytic leukemia seems to have finally turned the corner from darkness to light.

"She's amazing, she really is," says Guerrero, 27, who did something pretty remarkable on his own. When Casey suffered a third relapse of her insidious blood cancer at the end of last year, Guerrero vacated his IBF junior lightweight title in early February, a little more than a week after Casey underwent what absolutely had to be a live-saving, bone-marrow transplant at Stanford University Medical Center.

By doing so, Guerrero walked away from the biggest payday of his burgeoning boxing career, an HBO main event telecast on March 27. The southpaw was scheduled to move up to lightweight to face interim titleholder Michael Katsidis. A win would have opened lucrative doors to title shots against pay-per-view stars such as Juan Diaz and WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez, who appear set for a July rematch.

None of that mattered. The leukemia was beating them all. Casey was running out of options.

"Nothing else was working anymore," says Casey, 26, who had endured three rounds of sickening chemotherapy and exhausting radiation. She tried to mother their children, Savannah Rose, 5, and Robert Jr., 3, while absorbing chemo drugs through an Ommaya reservoir, a vessel implanted under her scalp with a tube feeding medication directly into her brain.

All the while, she encouraged Guerrero to remain in the ring as he climbed the ranks of boxing stardom. Casey, with her warm smile and colorful headscarves hiding her thinning hair, was a fixture at many of Guerrero's bouts, clutching their giggling toddlers and holding her own while her fight for her life raged within.

The leukemia would respond briefly to treatment and retreat, bringing everyone hope. Then it would emerge like a monster again, sending the childhood sweethearts, married since 2005, reeling as if they had taken a straight right to the chin.

"She was in remission three times, and she relapsed three times," Guerrero says, his voice trailing off in sadness. "That's when it came down to a bone marrow transplant."

And that's when Guerrero walked away from boxing, from what his handlers estimate was a six-figure payout had he stuck with the plan to fight Katsidis. He had vacated his featherweight belt in 2008 to move up to junior lightweight. That had been a smart move – Guerrero beat South African fighter Malcolm Klassen in August in Houston in a comfortable unanimous decision and claimed the IBF 130-pound title.

This time, he left for family. Even if it were for good, it was the winning move.

"The decision was made to vacate the title, to pull out of the fight and step away from boxing, and I had no problem with it," Guerrero says. "Family is everything. It's very important. And boxing is just there. Even pulling out when I was on top of the game, coming off a huge win on HBO, winning the title – I was on it. Everything was rolling.

"But my wife is more important. I had to attend to her. I had to give her the support that she has been giving me all through my career. I had to pay it back, after all she had been through."

Three months after Casey went on the list for a bone marrow transplant -- often a futile search for Hispanics, who comprise fewer than 10 percent of marrow donor programs worldwide -- a match showed up in a registry in Europe.

"A miracle," Casey says.

She underwent the procedure on Jan. 26.

During her tenuous recovery, when no one knew whether the transplant would take hold, Guerrero could no longer see himself as a boxer. When he whispered into his wife's ear at her bedside that he was walking away from the sport and a huge televised fight, Casey was in no position to argue this time.

"When he told me, I was kind of out of it because of the medications and everything," Casey recalls with a laugh. "But once I came out of it, I realized this time that I needed him with me. This was something life-threatening. So I was excited that he was at my side."

Casey remained hospitalized at Stanford until Feb. 18. Their extended family helped Guerrero with the children. Their faith in God, and their embrace of the power of prayer, kept the young couple focused and strong. When he found himself at his wit's end, when he was most scared and frustrated at the prospect of losing his wife, Guerrero would go back in the gym and train.

For what? A prize fight was furthest from his mind at that point.

"It was therapeutic, I guess," he says.

Maybe it was part of a greater plan.

Casey's marrow match was perfect. She has responded beautifully to the transplant, and her blood counts are returning to where they should be. After a brief stay with her grandparents in Menlo Park, so she could remain close to Stanford Hospital for daily visits, Casey has finally returned home to Gilroy and has tapered her treatments to once a week.

She wears a mask to protect herself from infection, always a threat to her delicate immune system. When Savannah returns home from preschool, everyone in the house is instructed to wash their hands carefully.

"The doctors said that I'm doing amazing right now. My counts are all good, and they took me off a couple of pills and a bag (of medication) that I had to carry around," Casey says. A biopsy taken from a marrow sample in her hip on Wednesday confirmed her prognosis remains good.

With his family in order, Guerrero's team at Golden Boy Promotions, including Oscar De La Hoya and his longtime publicist Mario Serrano, approached their lightweight star earlier this month with a proposal: a 10-round bout against Arrieta (34-15-4, 15 KOs), a puncher from Argentina who has won four of his last five fights.

"Casey was out of the hospital and everything was just starting to flow with the treatments," Guerrero says, "and when my management team came to me with this fight on the 30th, they said if I wanted to take it, it was there. No push. No pressure.

"I talked it over with Casey. She got really excited about it. She said if you're able to get a fight this soon, take it and start getting ready for it."

The bout will spotlight the return of the "Solo Boxeo Tecate" series on Telefutura. And by returning to the ring, Guerrero hopes to continue his advocacy to defeat leukemia. His fundraising efforts as "Man and Woman of the Year" for the Silicon Valley-Monterey Bay Chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) are important to him.

And the Guerreros -- grateful for that anonymous marrow donor in Europe who gave life back to Casey -- want to encourage other Hispanics to sign up for the national registry.

"I thank God that there was somebody out there that was aware -- aware of leukemia and lymphoma -- where my wife was able to get a donor within three months. That's just amazing," Guerrero says. "It makes you so excited to see what one person, who just jumped on the registry from a different country, can do for somebody else.

"This can bring awareness to millions of people. Just that one person. That's what excites me to get back in the ring, to work hard and perform and using this as a platform to bring that awareness to everyone. I appreciate everything so much more now."

Casey won't be at her husband's fight at the Tropicana. "The next one. For sure!" she says.

The happy returns are plentiful in the Guerrero family, in the ring and in life. Both Robert and Casey are back. And they are raring to go.