{"id":606357,"date":"2026-05-27T09:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T09:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606357\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T09:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T09:37:09","slug":"frankie-duarte-former-top-bantamweight-dies-aged-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606357\/","title":{"rendered":"Frankie Duarte, former top bantamweight, dies aged 71"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Frankie Duarte, the thrill-seeking bantamweight and super-bantamweight contender from the 1970s and 80s, has passed away at the age of 71 from a brain tumor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cA raging warrior in the ring and the most lovable person outside of it,\u201d wrote his great friend Rich Marotta while paying tribute to Duarte. \u201cThe SoCal boxing community will miss him dearly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Duarte, from Santa Monica in California, started boxing at the age of 13 hoping that the sport would keep him on the straight and narrow. But Duarte, despite turning professional at 18, would frequently find himself battling his taste for fast living.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In a terrific contest, Duarte lost in five rounds to Albert Davila in a 1977 WBC bantamweight eliminator. But within two years Duarte was, by his own admission, lost to drugs.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Heroin addiction had taken hold. His mother kicked him out of the family home.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI was living with an aunt,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.maxboxing.com\/news\/news\/a-chat-with-frankie-duarte\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Duarte told MaxBoxing in 2022<\/a>. \u201cI was strung out on heroin, I thought, \u2018what am I doing?\u2019 I dropped to my knees, and I cried. I thought, \u2018this is no life\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">What followed, in 1984, was the beginning of an incredible comeback. Trained by a young Joe Goossen, Duarte \u2013 by then widely written off \u2013 still had it all to do.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI was making a comeback, but it wasn\u2019t handed to me,\u201d Duarte remembered. \u201cI had to start back at square one. Nobody was handing anything to me. I really thought I\u2019ll have two fights and then make enough to get a car and then get a job and be done with boxing. I really was thinking about having two fights and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Though he would lose to Richie Sandoval, via 10-round split decision, he would beat Jesus Salad in 1986 before falling just short over the 15-round distance in a bid for Bernard Pinago\u2019s WBA bantamweight title the following year.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But despite planning to then retire, what followed in 1987 saw him crowned as the winner of The Ring\u2019s Comeback of the Year award when he stopped old rival Davila in a thrilling rematch.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In his last fight, in 1989, Duarte was stopped by WBC super-bantamweight boss, Daniel Zaragoza. By then, he was more than ready to walk away with an impressive 45-8-1 (33 KOs) record.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI want to be remembered as a guy who gave fans an exciting fight,\u201d Duarte once said. \u201cA guy who always tried to give the fans good fights, remembered for putting on a good fight every time I got in the ring.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frankie Duarte, the thrill-seeking bantamweight and super-bantamweight contender from the 1970s and 80s, has passed away at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,33643,206678,206679,206680,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-606357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-brain-tumour","tag-frankie-duarte","tag-frankie-duarte-obituary","tag-rich-moratta","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}