Alexis Arguello, 57; boxer won 3 titles before epic loss
LOS ANGELES - Alexis Arguello, who battled his way to three world boxing titles in the ring but lost several bouts with personal demons outside the ropes, was found dead early yesterday at his home in Managua, Nicaragua. He was 57.
Police are investigating the death and an autopsy is pending, according to a presidential spokeswoman. Mr. Arguello, who was elected mayor of Nicaragua’s largest city last year, suffered a gunshot wound to the chest. Several media outlets, quoting official sources, said Mr. Arguello shot himself.
The government declared three days of mourning in Nicaragua, where Mr. Arguello was widely considered the greatest athlete in that nation’s history. His coffin, accompanied by a police escort, was driven through the main streets of the capital yesterday afternoon, allowing citizens to pay their respects.
“He was the consummate gentleman,’’ said Bob Arum, Mr. Arguello’s former promoter. “After every fight that I promoted for him, about an hour after the press conference, he would show up in my suite with a jacket and a tie on and thank me. No other fighter I ever promoted did that.
“He came from a tough background, but he always comported himself as a gentleman. People would forget he was an athlete, he was so charming.’’
Mr. Arguello won 82 of 90 professional fights, 65 by knockout, in a 27-year career that ended with induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world for much of his career, the rail-thin boxer never lost at 130 pounds and was just the sixth man to win world titles in three weight classes - featherweight, super featherweight, and lightweight.
However, Mr. Arguello’s most memorable fight ended in defeat, when Aaron Pryor knocked him out in the 14th round of an epic 1982 junior welterweight bout at Miami’s Orange Bowl that many consider one of the greatest of all time. The victory became clouded in controversy after Pryor’s trainer, Panama Lewis, gave his boxer a drink from a water bottle rumored to contain an illegal substance. Pryor denied the accusations and met Mr. Arguello in a rematch a year later at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, knocking him out in the 10th round.
Mr. Arguello retired after the second loss to Pryor, only to stage two brief comebacks, the first in 1985, when he won two fights, and again in 1994, when he split two before quitting for good.
One of eight children of a shoemaker and his wife, Mr. Arguello was born April 19, 1952. He grew up on the streets of Managua’s poorest neighborhood in poverty so acute, when he was 5 his father attempted suicide by jumping into an abandoned well. Four years later Mr. Arguello’s parents told him they could no longer afford to send him to school, so the boy ran away to work on a dairy farm.
Mr. Arguello frequently credited memories of his difficult childhood for giving him the strength he needed to survive in the ring. But he experienced hardship in other ways, too.
With his country wracked by civil war in the late 1970s, Mr. Arguello’s brother Eduardo joined the Sandinista rebels. But shortly before the war ended Eduardo was wounded, captured, and burned alive by government forces.
That bought Mr. Arguello little goodwill with the Sandinistas, however, and after the rebels came to power in 1979 they confiscated everything he left behind, including two houses, a boat, two luxury cars, and his bank account, citing a picture of the boxer posing with the hated dictator Anastasio Somoza at a parade as evidence of his government sympathies.
“He was posing with me,’’ Mr. Arguello said years later. 