He was one best middleweights of all time – probably the best of them all. He had an amazing career spanning 15 years and 100 bouts, scoring a then-record 14 defenses of his title. And yet, his downfall was as catastrophic as anything 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 Monzon was the fifth of twelve siblings raised in abject poverty. The severe malnutrition that he suffered as a child was the cause of his lean physical frame. He suffered bone fractures in his hands very often, and it wasn’t until he paired up with Hall of Fame trainer Amilcar Brusa that he started taking vitamins and supplements that allowed him to turn his body into the punching machine he would one day become.

Almost six feet tall and with a terrific reach for a middleweight, Monzon stayed at 160 with almost no weight issues during almost his entire career, making a name for himself in Argentina with an unbeaten streak that began one year after his debut and stretched all the way up to his retirement.

After several legendary fights at Buenos Aires’ fabled Luna Park Stadium against the likes of Andres Selpa, Antonio Aguilar, Jorge Fernandez and a few visitors from abroad, Monzon traveled to Rome in 1970 to face former Olympic gold medallist and two-division champ Nino Benvenutti. Working behind a demolishing one-two that would later terrorize the entire division for the better part of the decade, Monzon stopped Benvenutti with one of the most brutal knockout punches that 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, Jose Napoles, Tony Mundine, Bennie Briscoe, and capping his championship years with two memorable battles against Rodrigo Valdez.

At the height of his powers, he had it all. A romance with TV starlet Susana Gimenez placed him on the cover of magazines and newspapers for weeks on end, and made him the object of desire for thousands of women attracted to his macho character and his rugged looks. He retired as a wealthy man, and for the most part administered his money quite well.

But then, disaster struck. On Valentine’s Day in 1988, following a late-night dispute after a night of drinking, Monzon struck his common-law wife Alicia Muñiz several times in the heat of a personal quarrel and then threw her off the balcony to a lawn only eight feet below. The death was ruled a homicide and Monzon was sentenced to eleven years in prison.

On January 8, 1995, Monzon was out on a furlough as he neared the completion of his prison term when the car he was driving spun out of control and flipped several times in the air, landing upside down in an embankment. Monzon, 52, was pronounced dead on the spot.

His final record was 87-3-9 with 59 stoppage wins. He was unbeaten in the last 80 bouts of his career, an accomplishment that has very few, if any, comparable instances in boxing history. In 1972 he shared the Fighter of the Year award from The Ring magazine with Muhammad Ali.

His life was the subject of several books and motion pictures, including a recent documentary shown on Netflix.

Monzon 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 he is the moderator of The Ring’s Women’s Ratings Panel. He served as copy editor for the second era of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.

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