Carlos Monzón shared the 1972 Ring Fighter of the Year honors with Muhammad Ali. Photo by AFP/AFP/Getty Images
He was one of the best middleweights of all time, probably the best ever. He had an incredible career that spanned 15 years and 100 fights, making a record 14 title defenses. And yet, his fall was the most catastrophic that boxing has ever witnessed.
Born in 1942 in San Javier, a region of the province of Santa Fe in Argentina inhabited mostly by members of the Mocoví Native American ethnic group, Carlos Monzón was the fifth of twelve siblings raised in absolute poverty. The severe malnutrition he suffered as a child was the cause of his slender physical frame. He suffered bone fractures in his hands very often, and it wasn’t until he joined Hall of Fame trainer Amílcar Brusa that he began taking vitamins and supplements that allowed him to turn his body into the punching machine he would one day become. would convert.
At almost six feet tall and with tremendous reach for a middleweight, Monzón stayed at 160 with almost no weight problems for almost his entire career, making a name for himself in Argentina with an undefeated streak that began a year after his debut and It spanned all the years. he walked until his retirement.
After several legendary fights at the legendary Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires against the likes of Andrés Selpa, Antonio Aguilar, Jorge Fernández and some visitors from abroad, Monzón traveled to Rome in 1970 to face the former Olympic gold medalist and two-division champion Nino Benvenutti. . Working behind a devastating one-two punch that would later terrorize the entire division for the better part of a decade, Monzón stopped Benvenutti with one of the most brutal knockout blows the division had ever seen, and proceeded to defend his belt a total of fourteen. times against the likes of Emile Griffith (twice), Gratien Tona, Tony Licata, José Napoles, Tony Mundine, Bennie Briscoe, and culminating his championship years with two memorable battles against Rodrigo Valdez.
At the height of his powers, he had it all. A romance with the television star Susana Giménez placed him on the cover of magazines and newspapers for weeks, and made him the object of desire of thousands of women attracted by his macho character and his rough appearance. He retired as a wealthy man and generally managed his money quite well.
But then disaster struck. On Valentine’s Day 1988, following a late-night dispute after a night of drinking, Monzón hit his wife Alicia Muñiz several times in the heat of a personal fight and then threw her off the balcony onto a lawn just eight feet away. below. . The death was declared a homicide and Monzón was sentenced to eleven years in prison.
On January 8, 1995, Monzón was on leave nearing completion of his prison sentence when the car he was driving spun out of control and spun several times in the air, landing upside down on an embankment. Monzón, 52, was declared dead at the scene.
His final record was 87-3-9 with 59 wins by knockout. He was undefeated in the last 80 fights of his career, an achievement that he has few, if any, comparable instances in boxing history. In 1972 he shared The Ring magazine’s Fighter of the Year award with Muhammad Ali.
His life was the subject of several books and films, including a recent documentary broadcast on Netflix.
Monzón became the first Argentine fighter to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.
Diego M. Morilla has written for The Ring since 2013. He has also written for HBO.com, ESPN.com and many other magazines, websites, newspapers and outlets since 1993. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He has won two first place awards in the BWAA’s annual writing contest and is the moderator of The Ring’s women’s ratings panel. He served as a copy editor for the second generation of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.
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