Mark Beiro woke up in a hotel room, as he had done hundreds of times before, and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. With a stretch and a yawn, he sat up in bed.

He had been the ring announcer the night before for a boxing card in Reno, Nev. He'd had to catch a bus in a short while to do the same job later that night in nearby Stateline, Nev.

Beiro awakened to a room filled with fog.

"I rubbed my eyes and I rubbed my eyes and I rubbed my eyes, but I couldn't see through that fog," he said. "I said to myself, 'Holy [expletive], why is there so much steam in this room?' I couldn't see beyond this fog, or steam, whatever you want to call it, and I figured I probably had something in my eye."

His immediate task was to get to the bathroom, turn on the water, wipe off his face and then go about the rest of the day.

It wasn't a simple chore. He felt his way along the walls to find the bathroom. Once in, he reached out for the faucet and turned it on. He splashed water in his face and looked in the mirror.

There was nothing but fog.

He'd come to the realization that he'd gone blind.

"To be honest with you, once I composed myself, I cried," said Beiro, who did bouts on NBC, ESPN, HBO and Showtime, among many other networks. "It was pretty difficult at that moment."

He needed to call for help. He made his way back to the bed, and picked up the phone. There was a direct button to reach the front desk, but he couldn't find it. He couldn't see to dial his wife, Jackie, at their home in Tampa, Fla. He had no way to summon someone to help him.

It was July 12, 2003, and 52-year-old Mark Beiro realized life as he knew it would change dramatically.

Beiro had begun ring announcing when he was 9 years old, when he was asked to introduce the fighters in the gym at an amateur card in the Ybor City section of Tampa.

He'd become one of the best in the business, and became a celebrity of sorts in 2000 when he landed a gig as the announcer on the hit Comedy Central series, "BattleBots."

It would be the fans of BattleBots who would be so helpful to him later as he opted for a while to continue his career as a ring announcer despite his blindness.

But on this morning, he was alone, desperate and very much afraid.

Now, a little more than 10 years later, his vision has been restored and he's anxious to get back into the business he loves. Top Rank's Brad Jacobs, a long-time friend, has talked with him and wants to put him back to work eventually.

Beiro has a self-deprecating sense of humor and jokes frequently about his blindness, but Mike Houser, in 2003 a freelance boxing reporter who knew Beiro, said he was the same way on the night he first went blind.

Houser had known Beiro from having covered the fights together, but it was not as if they had been long-time friends. But on July 12, 2003, fate brought them together.

Houser was assigned to cover the card in Stateline at what was then known as Caesars Tahoe. He was seated next to Beiro.

They greeted each other warmly, and then Beiro said something that Houser found odd.

"He says, 'I'm blind,' and I was expecting a joke, because Mark is the kind of a guy who jokes around a lot," Houser said. "And I guess I smiled or maybe I didn't react, I don't know, but he said, 'No, seriously, I'm blind.' I was sitting there trying to process all of this, him just telling me he's blind, and he was calm and doing his job getting ready to call the fights."

Beiro had gone blind because of his diabetes. He'd begun to lose his vision in Dec. 2002, but he had enough sight that he could function normally.

He'd gone to executives of the Nevada Athletic Commission as he arrived at Caesars Tahoe that night and let them know of his blindness. He asked for permission to announce the bouts from ringside, instead of climbing into the ring.

He only went into the ring once that night, before the first fight to tell the crowd that he'd be announcing from ringside.

"It was amazing how he did that," Houser said. "Here he is, blind, and it's the first day he's blind. He climbs up the steps, I guess out of memory, knowing how many steps there were, and then he goes into the ring and he knew exactly how far he had to go to get to the center of the ring. Nobody ever knew he was blind. He never said it and no one sitting there could have known."

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