What happened to Wilfredo Benitez ?

Brain damage. He'd been in boxing gyms damn near his entire life.

 

It was delayed accumulation. His Dad had him fighting grown men when he was like 12 or 13 so he was taking punches to the head from grown men so young. There are a lot of stories about weird behavior and that he seemed somewhat “******ed” even as a world champion.

It’s a very sad story.

 

All the stuff mentioned above, plus the intangible of how some fighters absorb punishment better than others; with HWs, you have Ali with 61 fights and a walking case of Parkinson's ... Holmes with 75 fights, Foreman with 81 fights and both still going strong. Benitez may have been El Radar, but it wasn't as if he never got hit; everybody gets tagged. How much it affects them is a coin toss. Terrible to see, he was such a marvel to watch at his best -

 

It's not just the punches you take in fights, it's years of sparring. With Benitez, who was a World Champion at 17, he was having tough spars with top guys at a time when his brain and body wasn't yet fully formed.
Add that to the obligatory ruinous 1980's coke habit and what you get is what we got.

 

I had no idea that’s how bad his personal life was, do you have any examples of his strange behaviors

 

I’ve got some saved. I’ll try and dig them up tomorrow. There was one about him being at a camp (I think in the Catskills) and him taking a crap and wiping his butt on the towels and leaving them about. He wasn’t doing it to be a pr1ck either I heard. He was just quirky like that.

 

People may not believe this, but he had a psychologically taxing lawsuit that really messed him up for boxing. Wilfred Gomez sued him and took his o. After he lost that, it was far worse than losing his 0.

 

Danny Lopez then sued for his red, as well. When he was left as just plain Wilf, the rot had truly set in.

 

And Larry Holmes sounds more articulate now ...then he did when was a fighter lol

 

To be fair, Davey Moore was a big strong 156 pound opponent and he ruined Benitez's ankle when he knocked him down.
Sure, Benitez was easier to hit by then than he had been a couple of years earlier but it was partly the way Benitez twisted his foot when falling that made him look so bad. If he'd gone down without ruining his foot like that he might have got back into the fight and given a better showing. I mean, yes, he was past his prime but once his ability to move had gone with the twisted foot he could only stand there trying to bob and weave his way out of it. Maybe a prime Benitez would have manage it but even in his prime he'd probably need to side step or spin off the ropes on occasion. Maybe a prime Benitez doesn't get knocked down by Moore in the first place, but Bruce Curry put him down hard in November '77 so who knows.

Benitez was clearly on the decline after the Hearns loss but it's worth remembering that Davey Moore and Matthew Hilton too were strong, young, hard hitting 154 pounders good enough to win world titles.
Benitez turned pro in 1973 and won his first world title in '76 so it's no surprise he's losing to fresher world class men (at a higher weight class) by '84, '86, after he's had 50 or more pro fights.

All of the stuff about drugs and brain damage and lack of training discipline is true as well, I reckon, but his decline from 1982 to '86 isn't that exceptional at all.

 

Wiping his arse on hotel towels and throwing them under the bed?

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/12/...se-haunts-wilfred-benitez-and-his-family.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-12-20-0712180293-story.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ch...th-chicago-20180615-story.html?outputType=amp

https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-b...sults/32411-radar-tragic-fate-wilfred-benitez

 

I think his training habits played a part in his demise

When a fighter takes punishement when he is not in condition that is bad for buisness. IMO.