Wilfred Benitez

Wilfred Benitez
Data
Birth Name	Wilfred Benitez
Weight class	Welterweight
nationality	Puerto Ricans
birthday	September 12, 1958
place of birth	new York
style	Left delivery
size	1.78 m
Combat Statistics
Struggles	62
Victories	53
Knockout victories	31
Defeats	8th
draw	1

Wilfred Benitez (born September 12, 1958 in New York ) is a retired boxer .

biography

Wilfred Benitez began his professional career in November 1973 when he was only 15 years old.

On March 6, 1976, at the age of 17 years and 5 months, Benitez became the youngest boxing world champion of all time in his 26th professional fight. He defeated the Colombian boxing legend Antonio Cervantes on points when two of the greatest defense specialists in history met . Cervantes is rated by " Ring Magazine " as the best Colombian boxer and fourth best light welterweight of all time.

After he was stripped of the world title in 1977, Benitez rose to welterweight and won two fights against Bruce Curry, the brother of Donald Curry , but had to go down three times in the first encounter. On January 14, 1979, he won the WBC world title against Carlos Palomino. In November of that year, however, he lost the belt through a technical knockout in the fifteenth round to Sugar Ray Leonard - the first defeat of his career.

He then rose again to a weight class, in the light middleweight division, and on May 23, 1981 defeated the WBC title holder, southpaw Maurice Hope , who had previously boxed with Eckhard Dagge in a draw. He successfully defended his title against Roberto Durán , but lost the title in December 1982 to Thomas Hearns on points. Hearns then said: "Nobody makes me miss like that."

At that time he was only 24 years old, but was never able to build on earlier successes until the end of his career in 1990 and never won a major fight. Benitez suffered brain damage from boxing and now lives in a nursing home in Puerto Rico.

Web links

• Wilfred Benitez in the BoxRec database
• Biography, English