{"id":929244,"date":"2026-10-11T17:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T17:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/929244\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T17:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T17:34:10","slug":"boxing-puerto-rican-boxing-legend-wilfredo-bazooka-gomez-dies-aged-69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/929244\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing: Puerto Rican boxing legend Wilfredo &#8216;Bazooka&#8217; Gomez dies aged 69"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Three-weight world champion Wilfredo &#8216;Bazooka&#8217; Gomez has died aged 69.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Puerto Rican won the WBC super-bantamweight title, WBC featherweight belt and WBA super-featherweight crown during a career in which he was renowned as a heavy puncher.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gomez fought in 48 fights and won 44, with 42 by virtue of knockout, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibhof.com\/pages\/about\/inductees\/modern\/gomez.html\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, external<\/a> in 1995. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former president of the sanctioning body the WBO Paco Valcarcel confirmed the passing of his compatriot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He passed away a few hours ago, the one to whom I owe having entered the great family of international boxing,&#8221; wrote Valcacel on social media on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Rest in peace, my eternal champion Wilfredo &#8216;Bazooka&#8217; Gomez.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gomez&#8217;s best wins came against fellow greats Mexico&#8217;s Carlos Zarate, two-weight champion Lupe Pintor, domestic rival Juan Laporte and American Rocky Lockridge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Zarate was his finest win, stopping the then 52-0 knockout specialist in five rounds in front of his home fans in San Juan to retain his WBC super-bantamweight title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three-weight world champion Wilfredo &#8216;Bazooka&#8217; Gomez has died aged 69. The Puerto Rican won the WBC super-bantamweight title,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-929244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}