January 8: 30 years have passed since the death of Carlos Monzón

Carlos Roque Monzón He was born on August 7, 1942 in Santa Rosa de Calchines, a commune in the Garay Department of the Province of Santa Fe. He was a professional boxeralthough he also had notable appearances as film actor. Some specialists consider him the best Argentine boxer and even one of the best in the world.

He achieved the title of world middleweight champion in 1970 and retained it until his retirement in 1977. The Ring magazine placed him in seventh place among the best boxers in the world, but a few years later, the prestigious BoxRec magazine placed him in third place among the best boxers of all time, and in 1990 he was incorporated into the International Hall of Boxing Fame.

What was Carlos Monzón’s career like?

He grew up in a difficult context. His family moved to the city of Santa Fe for more opportunities for advancement when he was 7 years old. He left school in the third grade to help his family by working. He started out as a shoeshine boy on the street, taking advantage of the Colón and Unión games to have more clients and more profits. Since boxing was taught in Unión, it was there that he began to become interested in this sport, and although he was a fan of Colón, this did not prevent him from starting to practice that discipline.

His first fight as an amateur was on October 2, 1959 and his last before turning professional on December 12, 1962. February 6, 1963 made his debut as professionalwhen facing Ramón Montenegro, whom defeated by knockout. That year and the following were difficult for him due to his lack of professionalism, which is why he suffered some defeats, but starting in 1965 he began a rise that seemed to have no end.

On February 1, 1966 he was crowned middleweight champion of his province, Santa Fe, and on September 3 of the same year he won the title of Argentine middleweight champion at Luna Park against Jorge Fernández. After that triumph, he himself built his house brick by brick, acting as a bricklayer. Proudly, he gave his family their first cement house.

In 1970 the international doors of boxing were opened to him and he knocked out champion Nino Benvenuti in the twelfth round. From that moment on, he made fourteen defenses of his title against the great boxers of the time, winning them all until his retirement in 1977. ending his career with one hundred fights of which he only lost threewhich were only by decision and those rivals would lose to Monzón in rematches.

Carlos Monzón and his prison sentence

In 1981 he married Alicia Muñiz, with whom he had a son, Maximiliano. 7 years later, on February 14, 1988, he arrived home in Mar Del Plata drunk, they argued and he savagely beat her. He then threw her off the balcony and jumped on top of her, killing her. For this crime, he was found guilty of Simple Homicide and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

He began his sentence in the Batán prison, near Mar del Plata, then he was transferred to Junín and finally to Las Flores, in the city of Santa Fe.

January 8, 1995: how Carlos Monzón died

By 1995 he was serving the end of his sentence and was allowed to take temporary trips to work. One of his occupations was to teach boxing at the gym of the Union of Civil Employees (UPCN) in the city of Santa Fe. Upon returning from one of those outings, he had a car accident in the Los Cerrillos area on provincial route 1, at northeast of Santa Rosa de Calchines.

At kilometer 51, the car that Monzón was driving, at almost 140 km/h, made an inexplicable movement. After biting the shoulder with its right front wheel, the vehicle flew, lurched almost seven times, crossed a ditch almost two meters wide, uprooted a kapok tree and about thirty-five meters from the road it stopped its uncontrolled march. He died instantly.