Ex-champ Paul Spadafora pleads guilty to charges in domestic dispute

PITTSBURGH — Former lightweight boxing champ Paul Spadafora — the “Pittsburgh Kid” — has pleaded guilty to resisting arrest and simple assault on police officers who responded to a domestic dispute at his home on Kearns Avenue in the West End in 2016.

The 42-year-old boxer was sentenced to time served and probation.

“It's hard for me to be clean when I'm in Pittsburgh,” Spadafora told the judge, adding that he started to drink alcohol at age 6 with his father.

Authorities have said he challenged the officers to fight, tried to push one down the stairs and spit on another. He was shocked with a stun gun and taken into custody.

Spadafora also was accused of stabbing his brother and kicking his mother during the dispute, but those charges were dropped when his family failed to appear at court hearings.

Spadafora's lawyer said his client was extremely intoxicated at the time but has since completed rehab and is staying sober. He said Spadafora is now training boxers at a gym in Punxsutawney and asked that he be allowed to serve his probation there.

“If I would never have a drink in my body, I would never be in the county jail or the penitentiary,” he said. “I wouldn't be in any trouble.”

Spadafora won the vacant International Boxing Federation lightweight belt in 1999 but surrendered the title in 2003.

In 2003, he shot and wounded his then-girlfriend during an argument. He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, a second-degree felony, and spent seven months in prison and six months in boot camp.

Several boxing comebacks have been pockmarked by alcohol-related arrests.