I gained a new appreciation for Felix Trinidad while visiting Puerto Rico two weeks ago and sitting in a workout with the five-time world champion.

Like any real fan of boxing, I've had the utmost respect for Trinidad since he proved his championship mettle and potential for greatness with wins over Hector Camacho Sr., Yory Boy Campas and Oba Carr in 1994. However, until MaxBoxing paid a visit to his training camp in San Juan recently, my admiration for the island's favorite son was based solely on his sheer destructive powers in the ring.

And as I've learned, the 29-year-old pugilist is more than just a three-division champ to the people of Puerto Rico, and their appreciation for him goes beyond his ring accomplishments.

However, to boxing fans around the world, the immediate appeal of Trinidad was his straight forward, seek-and-destroy style in the ring and the explosive, finishing power he possessed in both hands.

He reminded this nerdy boxing writer of the unstoppable space creature from the original Alien motion picture (Ridley Scott's 1979 Sci-Fi classic is my all-time favorite horror film). Remember what Ash, the traitorous science officer who had secret orders by the corporation behind the expedition to capture the alien creature and bring it back to earth at the expense of the space ship's crew, told Ripley (Sigorney Weaver) and my main man Parker (Yaphet Kotto, who had just decapitated the synthetic being with a British accent)?

I didn't think you remembered. Well, I turn 32 this month, and I recall the chilling lines from the beheaded android (played to perfection by Ian Holm) as if I saw the film yesterday.

Ripley asked Ash how the few surviving members of the crew could kill the homicidal super being? Ash coldly replied: "You can't.

"You still don't know what you're dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.

"I admire its purity, a survivor; unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality."

That was what I admired about Trinidad. His purity. He came to conquer all of his opponents and challengers, and he did so with chilling efficiency.

But he also did so without the usual ego mania and trash talk that comes with boxing's elite. Tito was a pure champion. He pounded his chest. He didn't grab his crotch. He always said he was going to win, and sometimes that his opponents would get knocked out. But he never questioned their sexuality or manhood or threatened to "take their souls and smear their pompous brains all over the ring when he hit them", like certain former heavyweight champ has recently boasted.

Trinidad talked about as much trash as much as that alien did in the movie.

As the welterweight and junior middleweight champ, Trinidad really did resemble a "perfect organism", at least offensively speaking. And he certainly embodied definition of a "survivor" as he always found a way to win over his 15 welterweight title defenses (second only to the great Henry Armstrong) and in his title unification bouts at 154 pounds. Sure you could run from him like Camacho Sr. and Oscar De La Hoya did, but you couldn't hide. You could drop him, like Anthony Stephans, Campas, Car, David Reid and Ferando Vargas did, but he would always get up and annihilate you for the fistic insult.

When he stepped up to middleweight last year, Trinidad made an almost scary metamorphosis from a sports hero to a near living deity, as far as Puerto Rican boxing fans were concerned. And I didn't quite get it. The atmosphere inside Madison Square Garden's main arena before his WBA title fight with William Joppy last May was like the Puerto Rican day parade condensed to 18,000 people over a few hours. There was a carnival going on in those paid seats during the preliminary fights. People waved giant flags, drank their asses off and danced in the stands while live bands belted out salsa tune after tune as the fans waited for their beloved Tito.

The electricity intensified to a degree that I had never before experienced at a live event when Tito actually stepped into the ring. It was literally breath taking, almost overwhelming.

I nervously looked behind me where historian Bert Sugar and Bud Schulberg, author of the screenplay of Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront", (two old cats that have been around for a minute) sat directly behind me and their eyes where as wide as mine (Sugar's a tad more bloodshot, but you get the picture). Schulberg looked back at me and nodded as if to say "Yeah, kid, this is one of those moments you won't forget".

When Trinidad landed a straight right and shook Joppy from his exposed chin down to his knees in the first round, members of the Puerto Rican press sitting in front of me began screaming. When follow up hooks scrambled Joppy's neurons and knocked him on his back near the end of the round, younger members of the press (not just the Puerto Rican media) jumped out of their seats, arms flailing, knocking over their chairs and dumping plastic bottles of water off the table, and nearly toppling my laptop computer. I wanted to yell at the guy next to me "Hey! Cool your s__t, and act like you've done this before." But the truth be told, I was in just as much awe.

Trinidad's record was a perfect 40-0 after that fight. He was a three-division champ who won his 160-pound belt in just as devastating fashion as he won his 147-pound title. "Say hello to the new Hit Man," I thought to myself. Fans and the press both made Bernard Hopkins, his next victim many thought, a 3-to-1 underdog. I knew the Executioner was no joke, but even I had my doubts about his chances against Trinidad at this point.

"Never count this bad mother f__ker out," I thought to myself about Trinidad. "Anyone he catches cleanly with that left hook, will go down. Trinidad is not human."

Of course he's all too human.

He's not an alien terminator and he is far from perfect. Like so many others, the father of two girls has had his share of marital problems, topped by his well-documented infidelity with a popular Puerto Rican model that produced an out-of-wedlock child before the Hopkins fight, that one-sided and brutal boxing lesson he absorbed for almost 12 rounds last September.

However, even though he returned to Puerto Rico Sept. 30th, 40-1 and no longer a world champion, Trinidad was greeted by a couple thousand fans when he stepped off his plane in San Juan. I doubt Hopkins will ever be greeted with such fanfare in his native Philadelphia, or anywhere for that matter. No disrespect to Nard. I like him, because I've gotten to know him to a certain degree over the past two years covering his fights and Las Vegas training camps.

But Trinidad is one of those special people you don't have to get to know to sincerely like. He's warm. Friendly. Approachable. Easy going. So much so that web master Gary Randall often forgot that he was at work when MaxBoxing was in San Juan two weeks ago to film Trinidad go through his workouts during a training session, and would often drop his digital video camera and break into conversation with the island legend (also forgetting that Tito doesn't really speak English - not that the fighter would have been able to understand our beloved G-Man if he did. The L.A. raised Randall inserted "dude", "bro" and "bra" between every word).

Now, as he Trinidad is just a couple of days away from stepping back into the ring for the first time, against durable and game former WBC middleweight titlist Hassine Cherifi, I'm getting a slowly increasing number of emails from the Tito fanaticos, who have been quiet since last September, and the message boards are starting to buzz, just a little bit, with online chants of "Tito! Tito! Tito!" (in all caps, of course).

So why is Puerto Rico so behind this guy, I mean, aside from the fact that he's a nice guy? Why did he become the ambassador for the tiny but fiercely proud and independent island?

Well, before the Hopkins fight, all Trinidad did was win. Sure, the island has produced a dozen other winners, and a lot world champions, but none were as consistent as Tito, and many of the best had a hard time staying out of trouble in-between fights.

Look two hall of fame Puerto Rican greats — Wilfredo Gomez and Wilfred Benitez, both of whom were three-division champions like Trinidad.

Gomez, who finished his career with an excellent 44-3-1 (42) record, won his first superfight when he stopped Mexican legend Carlos Zarate in five rounds in October of 1978. It was a great win for Gomez that even Trinidad, who was five years old at the time, probably remembers. However, Gomez, who won his next 10 fights by KO, lost the biggest fight of his life when Salvador Sanchez stopped him in eight rounds in August of '81.

Gomez bounced back to defeat Lupe Pintor in an epic 14-round battle in December of '82, but he lost to Azumah Nelson by 11th-round stoppage two years later in Puerto Rico.

Up and down in big fights, always pulling on the heart strings of Puerto Rican boxing fans (and while there are some people on the island who are not fans, damn near everyone follows the sport) — those were the careers of Gomez and Benitez. Defensive wizard Benitez beat the great Antonio Cermeno and the classy Carlos Palomino for world titles at 140 and 147 pounds, respectively, but lost to Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns.

Trinidad has been different during his career. Until Hopkins, he won every bout — including the risky matches, high-profile bouts and superfights:

Camacho Sr., Campas, Carr, Pernell Whitaker, Oscar De La Hoya, David Reid, Fernando Vargas and William Joppy.

And in-between these matches, Trinidad not only decimated tough guys like Luis Garcia, Anthony Stephens, Troy Waters, Hugo Pineda and Mamadou Thiam, but he stayed out of serious trouble. No out-of-the-ring scuffles, no high speed car chases with police and most importantly, no drugs.

Drugs ruined the careers and lives of two of Puerto Rico's best lightweight titlists. Esteban DeJesus, the first man to beat the great Roberto Duran, won the WBC lightweight title against Ishimatsu Suzuki in May of '76. But DeJesus, who also beat Alfonso Fraser and went 15 competitive rounds with Antonio Cervantes, eventually died of AIDS 13 years after winning the title, the result of IV drug use while in prison. DeJesus, only 37, died with an excellent record of 57-5 (32).

Edwin Rosario, a former three-time lightweight champ and 140-pound titlist, also died as a result of his drug addiction. The power-puncher who streaked to 21-0 (20), looking a lot like the great Gomez, before winning the WBC lightweight title from Jose Luis Ramirez, 82-4 at the time, in May of '83, died from a drug overdose in his parent's house on Dec. 1st, 1997. Rosario — who also beat Howard Davis, Frankie Randall, Livingston Bramble, Anthony Jones, Loreto Garza and gave Julio Cesar Chavez and Camacho Sr. tough fights in loses — was only 35 when he passed away with the fine ledger of 40-6 (35).

Rosario's rival Camacho exhibited all-time great skills and talent in the early '80s, but drug use and an over-active night life lowered him to a show biz attraction in the '90s, a time he should have been retired, living comfortably off of his ring earnings.

Trinidad could do that now, although some wish he would. But until he does decide to hand up his gloves, the people of Puerto Rico will continue to back their man, their son, their cousin, their brother.

"You've never seen anything like Tito in Puerto Rico," Lee Santiago, MaxBoxing's chaperone on the island, said as he drove us around San Juan the first day we arrived. "It's like a love affair with him. Everyone from the governor to the guy who cleans the toilet loves Tito."

He's the boy next door who made good, Santiago explained, but he never left the neighborhood (or in this case, the island).

"He's a champion that kids here can look up to because he pretty much stays out of trouble," Santiago continued, "but the older folks dig him too because he's got a lot of his father's beliefs. He's really kind of old fashioned.

"I know he had Big Pun and Fat Joe walk out to the ring before he did before he fought De La Hoya, but I guarantee you that wasn't his idea. I'm sure he was cool with it, and all, but Tito likes the old-school salsa. The kind of music that his dad grew up to. That's the music he usually plays when he walks to the ring, and people just love it. He brings back the old jams, and it's music by Puerto Ricans from Puerto Rico.

"It's like if a young African-American boxer walked out to old Motown jams instead of DMX or gangsta rap."

So there you have it. Trinidad is a special cat, boxing fans. I say we enjoy him while we can. I know I have a better appreciation for him now than I did prior to meeting him. If you're a MaxBoxing member, peep this video Randall produced of Tito training and answering our many questions, and remember — when he's done boxing, he's gone. No sequels like we had with Alien.