HAVANA -- Boxing legend Teofilo Stevenson says it was the insult to Cuban President Fidel Castro that set off the clash that resulted in his arrest at the Miami airport last month.

In an interview published in this week's Trabajadores newspaper, the former three-time Olympic champion told his version of events of the Oct. 23 incident with an United Airlines employee.

Headed back home after attend a charity event in Washington organized by Muhammad Ali, Stevenson passed through U.S. customs and immigration without problems.

But he told the Communist workers' weekly that he got suspicious when a man claiming to be a United Airlines employee demanded to see his ticket.

"Because he did not identify himself, I suspected that he was not an employee and refused to give it to him," Stevenson said. "Then he began to offer up insults against the commander-in-chief (Fidel Castro), against our government, against all of us."

The employee then called the police, Stevenson said.

The boxer said that the police and the employee refused to let him continue on his journey and that during the ruckus he dropped his ticket.

Straightening up after retrieving the ticket "I gave him a head butt that evidently left him dizzy," said Stevenson, inferring that the strike was accidental.

A police report on the incident alleges that it took four Metro-Dade police officers to restrain Stevenson.

Stevenson was held for four others and later allowed to return to Cuba that evening.