Hector Camacho

was a Puerto Rican professional boxer and singer. Known for his quickness in the ring and flamboyant style, he held major championships in the super featherweight (WBC, 1983), lightweight (WBC, 1985), and junior welterweight (WBO, 1989 and 1991) divisions. After earning minor titles in four additional weight classes, Camacho became the first boxer to be recognized as a septuple champion.

During his later years, Camacho expanded his popular role and appeared on a variety of Spanish-language reality television shows including Univision’s’ dancing show Mira Quien Baila and a weekly segment on the popular show El Gordo y La Flaca named Macho News. But, he also had trouble with drug abuse and criminal charges. In 2005 he was arrested for burglary, a charge to which he would later plead guilty. In 2008, he won his last major fight, the World Boxing Empire middleweight championship. In 2011, he was shot at three times by would-be carjackers in San Juan, but was uninjured. In the fall of 2012, Camacho was awaiting trial in Florida on charges of physical abuse of one of his sons.

On November 20, 2012, Camacho was shot and seriously wounded while sitting in a car outside a bar in his native Bayamón, Puerto Rico; the driver, a childhood friend, was killed in the shooting. Camacho died four days later; after he was declared clinically brain dead, his mother requested the doctors remove him from life support. After lying in state for two days in Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Camacho’s remains were transported to New York for burial at request of his mother.