He and Mark Medal were in sensational fights for a while there! Although born and raised in the USA, the Puerto Rican Boxing Commission has recognized them as among Puerto Rican boxing world champions. Unlike other countries, Puerto Ricans recognize people of Puerto Rican blood as Puerto Rican even if they were born in another universe. (the latter may be due to the fact Puerto Rican citizenship, while valid and existent, is mostly symbolic). Anyways so do you remember him?
Arroyo was always fun to watch on ESPN and other channels. He was part of a very enjoyable group of very good but not great lightweights of the early 1980s. Arroyo, Jimmy "The Ringmaster" Paul, "Rockin'" Robin, Blake, Tyrone "Butterfly" Crawley, and the Charlie Browns, Choo Choo and White Lightning, respectively as well as others provided a lot of great viewing for me and my brother.
I remember him, I think he never got his just due because Ray Mancini was also from Youngstown Ohio and hugely popular at the time.
I remember when he beat up Charie Choo Choo Brown (Philadelphia). Arroyo dominated that fight. Made Brown look bad.
What a lively scene we had at 135. The two matches that needed to happen didn’t: Harry vs Mancini and Choo Choo vs White Lightning.
Good fighter, tough man, he was a regular on CBS back in the early-mid 80's. He had a bunch of exciting fights.
Good fighter. Also had great wins over Terrance Alli and Joe Manley which don´t get mentioned. Shame Alli never won a World title, he deserved it with all the great fights he gave us. I remember his coming to Spain twice, firstly he fought Thai former Muay Thai champion Homknokkor Som Song who was being touted (in Spain at least) as the next Saensak Muangsurin. In his 1st pro fight he struggled to ko a brave British journeyman Kevin Plant in round 7. Thinking Harry Arroyo was shot they enticed the 47 fight former champ to sunny Marbella on the undercard of Marcos Villasana´s World title defence against Ricardo Cepeda. To be honest Arroyo did look completely shot. Song hurt everythime he land one of his haymakers but Harry never stopped jabbing and refused to get overwhelmed to take a deserved victory on points. This earned him a fight with the future light-middle and middleweight champ Javier Castillejo. The young Castillejo proved a little too strong for Arroyo when he upped the tempo in a premature stoppage. The biased referee did Harry some favours in the long run. This content is protected
