Jorge Castro, the former WBA middleweight champion, died aged 59 on Wednesday, October 14, after collapsing at the Mor\u00f3n Bingo Hall in Argentina.<\/p>\n
Born in Caleta Olivia, Santa Cruz, in 1967, Castro was one of Argentina\u2019s finest boxers and fought prolifically throughout a 20-year career that ended in 2007. The pinnacle of his 130-11-3 (90 KOs) career came in 1994, when he claimed the WBA middleweight title with victory over Reggie Johnson.<\/p>\n
That impressive form continued and, in his second defense and most famous fight, he stopped John David Jackson in a rip-roaring roller coaster of a contest that was widely regarded as the best of the year.<\/p>\n
Castro successfully defended his belt twice more, including another victory over Johnson, before losing the title at the end of 1995 when he was outpointed by Shinji Takehara.<\/p>\n
In 1997, the Argentine split two bouts with the great Roberto Duran at super middleweight before a reasonably successful campaign at cruiserweight saw him twice challenge unsuccessfully for world titles at the start of the following decade.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Castro was known in the Buenos Aires area for his charitable work in soup kitchens and community centers.<\/p>\n
According to a police report, Castro, who suffered from diabetes, received medical attention after collapsing but died at the bingo hall, where he had been accompanied by his daughter and her mother. A heart attack was subsequently determined to be the cause of death.<\/p>\n
Describing his final moments, his daughter said: \u201cWe were fine and suddenly he told me, \u2018I\u2019m going to the bathroom.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe went to the bathroom and when he came back he said, \u2018My chest hurts a little.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI told him, \u2018That\u2019s because you smoke like a savage.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me, \u2018It hurts a lot, daughter.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when we called the authorities at the place and it was like that, so fast, just like I\u2019m telling it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took him to a separate room, started doing CPR on him privately, and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Castro, who had been married six times, is survived by his partner, Noeila Vigliarolo, his 15 children and 14 grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jorge Castro, the former WBA middleweight champion, died aged 59 on Wednesday, October 14, after collapsing at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,710,49,48,320862,82],"class_list":["post-936694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxingscene","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jorge-castro","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936694","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=936694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}