Boxing
- For a list of Argentine boxers, see Category:Argentine boxers
Pascual Pérez was Argentina's first world boxing champion. There are Argentine boxing legends such as Carlos Monzón, Santos Laciar, and Juan Martin Coggi, who held the world champion's title in their categories. Argentine boxers have, as of 2004, earned 24 Olympic medals, including seven gold medals.
Argentine boxer Victor Galindez was the third Hispanic to win the world's Light-Heavyweight title (after Puerto Rico's José Torres and Venezuela's Vicente Rondon, WBA-recognized champion during the middle of 1970s). Galindez died after he was run over by a car during an auto racing competition that he took part of.
In 1994, WBA world Middleweight champion Jorge Castro knocked out John David Jackson in the ninth round to retain his title in Monterrey, Mexico. Since Castro was on the brink of suffering a technical knockout loss when he won the fight, the punch with which he beat Jackson has become known as boxing's version of Diego Maradona's Hand of God goal.
Marcela Acuna is a world champion female boxer, and arguably one of the most popular fighters of the 2000s in Argentina.
Other fighters, such as Oscar Bonavena, Juan Roldán, and Luis Firpo, did not win world championships, but were also popular among boxing fans during their years as professional fighters.
On 17 April 2010, Sergio Martínez outpointed American Kelly Pavlik in Atlantic City to become the lineal Middleweight champion of the world.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Argentina
Famous quotes containing the word boxing:
“... to paint with oil paints for the first time ... is like trying to make something exquisitely accurate and microscopically clear out of mud pies with boxing gloves on.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)