Great boxers who killed themselves?

Joe Louis had no one to blame but himself for winding up broke.
It can be argued the IRS/US Government should have cut him some slack for twice defending his title for the war effort and only taking training expenses for it ,but he spent $$$ like there was no tomorrow and unfortunately for Joe, unlike the old adage, tomorrow always does eventually come.

 

Alexis Arguello

 

Boxing is full of troubled souls.

James Robertson Cooper killed himself after losing a bunch of money, but he was actually still financially pretty well off, and it was thought to be far more due to depression and declining health.

 

I've been through some pretty dark places.

The good times will come again, but for now try to focus on doing the best you can day to day, or even moment to moment. Try to find little things that you can care about it can even be a book, a song, or a film.

You matter more to many people far more than you realise. Depression tends to make you shut down to others, which is quite self reinforcing.

Sometimes its easier to open up to someone a bit more distant to you first.

Feel free to DM me if you ever want to chat too.

 

Billy Collins is the first name that comes to mind. Retired due to the eye injuries sustained after Luis Resto and Panama Lewis doctored the gloves, troubles with his girlfriend, a row with his dad and he drove his car into a culvert. Horrible story.

Randolph Turpin turned the gun on himself after shooting his daughter and injuring her. God knows what was going on in his head.

There are quite a lot of iffy suicides in boxing - Arguello, Gatti, Freddie Mills, Edwin Valero - where the suggestion is that outside forces may have bumped them off. Certainly the rifle suicides of Mills and Arguello don't stack up neatly.

I'm actually surprised there aren't more. By nature of their profession, a lot of boxers are always going to be more extreme, mentally, than your average Joe. That's a prequisite for anyone who makes a career out of getting punched, surely. Then throw in the end of career uselessness that professional athletes feel when their physical gifts wane, the lack of education most boxers had and few opportunities as a result post-retirement. For most retiring boxers, the landscape is pretty bleak.

And then the injuries - brain trauma, arthritis, sight - which would affect daily quality of life. Many retired boxers are financially destitute having been ripped off, divorced or maybe just never really earned the big bucks. Boxing's full of coulda been stories. When you're broke, that fork in the road in life where you took the wrong choice must play on your mind.

Strange that two referees off the top of my head also killed themselves. Richard Green reffed the Mancini-Kim tragedy and I believe he never got over the trauma. Not sure if that's true. Mitch Halpern, ref of Tyson-Holyfield 1, also shot himself dead. Nobody ever really got to the bottom of why, as far as I know.

 

Good stuff, Tonto.

 

Valero had a massive TBI from a motorcycle accident. He was known to be extremely possessive with his wife. He murdered her and then hung himself in a cell.

Gatti got drunk. He hit some guy with a beer bottle or soemthing. He went back to the hotel room. His wife went to sleep. He drank a six pack by himself and hung himself using her purse.

 

You know my friend, that is up for debate. Alexis was a politician, he lived in a very troubled nation, full of turmoil.

 

Eddie Machen supposedly did, although Eddie did suffer for years from Mental Illness. Floyd Patterson once said that when he fought Machen on July 5 1964, he had Eddie hurt on the ropes but spared him because Machen had been in a Mental Institution, he felt that by hurting him more it could contribute to more severe issues for Machen.

 

You are correct, also Joe Louis was going thru a divorce from his wife Myra.

 

Isn’t that the point of a thread? Most threads on here could simply be asked to Google, but we are creating topics for us all to talk about

 

Turpin because he had a mental breakdown, shot his kids then himself, his daughter survived, I believe he lost most of his money which was probably one of the reasons that led to it

 

Might also be relevant to add that the vast majority of fighters -- great or otherwise -- don't kill themselves despite some of them living pretty awful lives. So suicide isn't recognized either as a common or particularly good solution to life's troubles even among boxers.

Quite the opposite. Some great fighters soldiered on through serious difficulties without killing themselves. And are often admired for it.

 

I believe that happened in 1966.

 

Louis married Marva Trotter the day he fought Max Baer they divorced and remarried but coudn't make a go of it because of his serial adultery.In later years he married Rose Morgan but that foundered too .Louis earned over four and a half million dollars spent it and more besides.