Death that arrives so suddenly, without warning, is to the Latin community about as desolate and lonely a tortured spirit taken to go elsewhere that there are special services held for the departed.  That might strike something of a vital cord or two to the living, that there are dead who walk amongst us who don’t have a home whilst other ones are simply roaming for comfort in seeking rest.

It is with this in mind that December holds a special meaning amongst our boxing constituents from identical comfort zones, respects, and the lonesome restless ones who’ve gone before their time abruptly, without having the chance to be saying goodbye.  There’s sadness about it.  An almost inconceivable regret and unapologetic manner in the ways some leave only to return in torment from beyond.   Sometimes, given the chance, an immediacy to find a reason isn’t placed to reasonably get you to know as much as discovering whether it is by accident, design, or turned expedient assuming it was. 

What could be found are the circumstances surrounding divulged, with about as lengthy a history about the private demons battled which tells very little in manners of consequence other then proxy. 

The physicality and the soul in which men, women or child whose left that breath of life departed, has confounded most of us — to the damn near shaken exteriors reminding those who joined an other side that presumably holds court for eternal rests — reaching from beyond every partition as they go on occasion to speak, adhering for some of us to be listening beyond devises from the gravesites.  For some of those headstones not all of them get to realize before going through that light on its journey so willingly, whether merited, or terribly burdened by any conscious effort. 

The beloved Middleweight Carlos Monzon met his untimely death on a weekend furlough hurriedly returning to a prison cell completing an old portion about his life to start another one with a new family.  He never got to see it.   23-year old Featherweight great Salvador Sanchez’s life went much too quickly, about as sudden as a speeding car wreck could, and his life was snuffed out in the blink of an eye just as his love for fast cars once did.  

Death, old and insensitive a necessary distinguishable thing is not a purgatory, any more then it’s not a willing and able circumstance once taken by surprise?   There’s another one that approaches by candlelight vigil, yearly for ten years time now in the island of Puerto Rico. 

It might have ended before it began for this fighter.  When as a youngster he looked up and idolized his older brother who bled from the same substance abuse wounds in an impoverished barrio… the neighborhood streets of Toa Baja. 

It’s been already ten years since his demise, but what the late film collector Jimmy Jacobs and managerial expert, and confidant, the late Bill Cayton, found in three individuals in the form of the Bronx, Brownsville, Brooklyn, and Puerto Rico, perceived about as fundamentally sound as getting a primal benediction from a Priest, with its flock receiving signs of the cross before taking communion wafers.   

The three were Wilfred Benitez, Mike Tyson, with the third chap called “El Chapo”.   And when he hit you with his right cross, it most assuredly came after you having gotten several welts from a predisposed body beating.   His right hand had the kinds of anonymity to it to cancel, and yet he fought very grounded stock in his speed and lateral movement.   His work pads at the gymnasium took more battering, very often ruining them. 

Benitez’s contract came much later on when his father Gregorio sold it to Jacobs for $75,000.

However, Mike and Edwin have been stablemates for roughly six years together under managers Cayton and Jacobs.  

In the boxing sense of the word he was a loner, fighting for his livelihood, beloved homeland, and potentialities that lay before any pragmatic roots took over being planned along the way, however, there was nothing mistaken about him in the Lightweight division where he made havoc a household name.   

Didn’t need to wait till age 20 to make the 1984 Olympic games set in LA, not already having won 28 amateur fights of 30, the junior Olympics and the P.R. Golden gloves, and a necessity to signing bonuses turning pro as a sixteen year old for an opportunity to escape hardships which hadn’t happen to many kids.   And lesser had the kind of potent punch to annihilate oppositions in engaging efforts to outbox them before taking them out. 

Not when you’re a Three-time Lightweight sensation, and a One-time junior welterweight champion, like Edwin “El Chapo” Rosario, 47-6, 41 KO’s, been.   

Rosario actually didn’t fight in that certain pre-70’s era of the very riveting New York’s Felt Forum, as we’ve known it.  He fought but once in April 1981, kayoing journeyman Tony Tris (TKO 4). 

It wasn’t until Edwin campaigning on his way to his third Lightweight title that I seen him fighting there on February 9, 1989, dissecting what was left of Jesus Gallardo (TKO 8), at an above fighting weight that I suddenly realized about how special Rosario was.   El Chapo made even shorter work returning the following month for that March, beating Larry Benson (TKO 5), which had led to achieving another chapter in history for Edwin.  Rosario, on November 21st 1987, lost in what several boxing insiders consider one of the best fights for the ‘80’s decade to Julio Cesar Chavez, at the Las Vegas, Hilton, by TKO 11, and his WBA Lightweight championship.

This for the Vacant WBA strap Julio Cesar Chavez abandoned, therefore on July 9, 1989, at the Showboat Hotel & Casino, Atlantic, City, New Jersey… with Rosario trailing behind on all three judges scorecards against Anthony Jones (20-1); he let fly with a combination that decked Jones who befell like somebody pulled the carpet from beneath his feet tumbling head first; and crashed to the canvas in a big thud without a leg from under him (TKO 6).

I only saw Trevor Berbick do the same rubbery scene after “Iron Mike” hit ‘em.   

Rosario pulled almost the same miraculous thing much earlier in his career June 23rd 1984, against the blazing fastest lightweight in the ’76 Olympiad, fighting Howard Davis, JR., a fighter who had came short against then WBC Lightweight champion Jim Watt.  This time Edwin sprung like the benevolent genie in the bottle socking some serious poisonous venom flash knocking Davis down, and getting the nod by a split-decision victory retaining his WBC Title.  

Those setup a return meeting from an earlier fight May ‘83 in which Edwin defeated Jose Luis Ramirez, arguably the best Lightweight in the world, winning by unanimous decision the coveted prize that was out for grabs.  Back again in Puerto Rico, this at the Hiram Bithorn Stadium, San Juan, November 3rd 1984, Ramirez extracted some of that potion of his own and TKO’d Edwin in 4.  Each hurting each other with a composite for total destruction, and little left in its wake. 

Edwin’s perhaps best was a fight happened at York Hall, Bethnal Green, London, UK, June 16, 1985, in which he fought the undefeated 24-0, 19 KO’s, Frankie “The Surgeon” Randall, and with a 26-1, 23 KO’s to Edwin’s ledger, Rosario wasn’t intimidated as he delightfully took the point’s win (W 10) having won the English noble hearts.  The following December, he knocks around Roque Montoya, and then puts him out of his misery (KO 7) in New York, ending that year to further set the follow-on drama to getting the WBC lightweight crown.    

The exuberant renegade, Hector “Macho” Camacho, 28-0, 15 KO’s, in sparkles surely laid some patent-leather with that robe, trunks and shoe accessories he wore defeating rather handedly Jose Luis Ramirez, and he now suddenly became the man who beat the man.  

Ramirez barely touched Camacho in the trajectory from the outside, and opinions of the fight ensued whether or not Rosario could be the exception.  June 13, 1986, the Garden was electric.  It certainly wouldn’t be an exaggeration thinking Macho was so confident entering the match that he might have misconstrued, for all intended purposes, Edwin’s intent.   A left hooking Rosario would and could not breach this night, even if all the hooking and lead rights in the world couldn’t all land, the important thing was that some consequentially did!     

The fifth, and eleventh rounds were the shots heard around Macho’s world, which rang bells in his head, as Rosario pressed and moved in forward formation to attack the body and the head. 

Camacho backpedaled sliding a jab or two, maybe three, but the effects of those pepped up punches were about as bad a beat down as anyone could get to discourage a lion.  Camacho stood, held, punched, and spun his time away with having just managed to save his belt by the slightest of margins with scores going against Rosario in 115-113 (Twice), and one in favor of Edwin going 114-113.   The Garden’s boos were apparently very piercing and evident being heartfelt placed upon that verdict.

On a Twin bill that following September 26th over at the Abel Holtz Stadium, Miami, Beach, Florida, with Hector Camacho defending his WBC lightweight title unanimously against Cornelius Boza-Edwards, everybody really wanted to see the typical boxer Rosario was, as he challenged the WBA lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble.  

Bramble talked as much guff to get into the Rosario head, but it was Bramble getting his brains scrambled — who managed to somehow make a magnificent split — much like an expert gymnast on the floor exercises — unable to lift himself off the ground after taking a duplicate pair of thudding hooks, and a stiffened barbarous hard right that was like an aftershock taken as Edwin’s token to give Livingstone as a parting gift on his way down.  Rosario, in a stunner, knocked out Bramble in 2, and recaptured the WBA Lightweight Title.      

Still viable and agile, August 11th 1987, for his second defense of the WBA Lightweight Title, Rosario, as a 24-year old at the UIC Pavilion, with 1,963 in attendance, knockedfellow Puerto Rican, Juan Nazario out in the eighth round with a debilitating left hook, as Panamanian referee Carlos Berrocal counted him out at the 2:43 mark.  Somehow the eyes and lifelessness to the Nazario legs weren’t coming around as he appeared in a zombie state.

In revising such a marquee fighter that Edwin Rosario has been, its good to note his routine lifetime 86-percentile penchants for knocking his opponents out.  During 1994 local television broadcast in Puerto Rico, a newscaster pointed out Rosario and caught up addressing him as “El Chapo” Rosario, and, for many who seen it thought that Edwin was putting on a gag telling the reporter that he didn’t know from whom he was referring about?  A greater acronym would take precedence as the entire island began getting concerned about it. 

Rosario, born in Barrio Candelaria, had a brother named Papo Rosario who was into his second year as a professional when he died suddenly.  Chapo was to rededicate his professionalism in absence of his brother.  Few knew that when May 1st 1983 came around, Rosario swept the first seven rounds in his fight with Ramirez, and then in hindsight fought the duration with a sustained injury to his hand that required surgery after winning the fight. 

In a Madison Square Garden PPV feature, April 4, 1990, lost the rematch to fellow countryman Juan Nazario in an ugly fight.  An accidental head butt was ruled that night, and due to the massive cut on Rosario’s injury above his eye they dethroned the champion after a doctor’s advice saying he could not continue in the 8th thus favoring Nazario ahead in the fight.    

Edwin went up in weight June 14, 1991 to challenge WBA junior welterweight champion Loreto Garza, in Arco Arena, Sacramento, and stopped Garza in the third to become a Four-time world champion with his first being at 140 lb.  And on my parents wedding anniversary, April 10, 1992, fought Japan’s Akinobu Hiranaka in Mexico, and the kamikaze caught Rosario cold at 1:32 of the first.  August 8th thereafter kayos George Kellman in San Juan (TKO 5), and then traveled to Tennessee, The Pyramid, in Memphis, January 30, 1993, for the rematch with Frankie Randall, and got stopped by the Surgeon Randall in 7.    

He was to debut as a bantamweight, grew into his own realm defining weight, and captured his first World championship at age 20.  Edwin had more life in him then the slow decline we witnessed.  To many he was a live walking Mori-Vivi (Dead-Alive). 

At the start of the December month, 1997, Edwin Rosario was declared deceased, and by the coroners own official conclusion said it was due to an acute case of pulmonary edema.   

Edwin boxed so beautifully when he won with the right strategy, and was loved above all else on how he carried developing the fight.  Rosario had risen many more times to the captivity and promises of a boxing modern-day Lazarus.  Who could keep him under? 

Inducted into the International Boxing Hall Of Fame, January 12, 2006.       

M

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