Death ends Pancho Villa?s two-year reign as world fly champ (Conclusion of a five part series)
By Eddie Alinea
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 27 Jun 2010
World flyweight champion Pancho Villa fought 13 more times following his seventh round knockout title victory over Welshman Jimmy Wilde on June 18, 1923, two of them with his crown on the block. Two years after that in July of 1925, he was dead following a loss in a non-title, overweight fight with future world welterweight champion Jimmy McLarnin.
It has been said somewhere in the series that his father Rafael Guilledo, left his wife and his six-month old son Francisco to join the United States Navy, forcing the sibling to engage in menial jobs at tender age and, eventually as a fighter.
The young Guilledo, who was to carry the nom de guerre Pancho Villa taken after the legendary Mexican revolutionary, and his father never saw each other until months after becoming the first Filipino and, for that matter, Asian to win a world championship.
Sometime in 1924 a man turned up at Pancho?s apartment in New York, introducing himself as Rafael, his long-lost father. To prove his claim, the stranger showed a mole on his shoulder, a mark his mother Maria often told him as one way of identifying her
It could have been an emotional and dramatic meeting and as the late journalist Eric Giron, then of the Saturday Mirror Magazine, a sister publication of the MANILA TIMES, described the meeting in an article, Pancho addressed the old man ?Sir.?
Pancho, Giron wrote, asked his foster father Paquito how much money he still had and when told that they had $6,000, the world champion gave the man $5,000. That was the last time father-and-son saw each other.
Not too many know that the fight that presaged the end of Pancho?s career and his life was an overweight match against McLarnin, who was to crown himself the welterweight champion of the world later.
That fight, held July 4, 1925, the day America was celebrating its Independence Day, saw the brave Filipino climbed the ring with a swollen face due to an ulcerated tooth he has been suffering even days before the encounter.
Wire reports of the fight had it that Villa fought hard but his tooth bothered him so much in the entire 10-round fight, losing on points that could have gone his way. Many, in fact, disputed the decision.
Promoters of the fight were actually agreeable for postponement because of Villa?s health, but the Filipino himself insisted to go on, saying thousands of Filipinos had already rushing to board the ferries to the site of the fight in Oakland, California.
Three days after the bout, the champ still felt the pain of his tooth. A dentist pulled out Pancho?s remaining wisdom teeth, but the flamboyant Villa, against the order of the doctor, threw a party that lasted for three days.
On July 13, doctor diagnosed Villa as suffering from Ludwig?s angina or infection of the throat; a result of neglect of the gums following an earlier extraction. He was taken to the hospital the same day and the following morning he was operated on. He died on the operating table 18 days before he would have celebrated his 24th birthday.
Pancho?s body was shipped to Manila in August the same year under a cloud of mourning. In contrast to his brief visit to the country following his victory, the streets were draped in black when his body lifeless arrived.
Pancho Villa was laid to rest at the North Cemetery where he remained unremembered until in October 1961, the Ring Magazine, acknowledged as the ?Bible? of boxing, elevated him to the Hall of Fame, again, the first Filipino and Asian to have been honored.
At the end of the last millennium, he was named by the Associated Press ad the ?Greatest Flyweight of the Century, having as company the illustrious Sugar Ray Robinson, the ?The Greatest Boxer of the Century? and Muhammad Ali, who was named the ?Greatest Heavyweight.?
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eddie Alinea.
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