The world will little note nor long remember how flamboyant fighter Hector “Macho” Camacho died.
It appears from police reports from Bayamon that the former world champion was shot and left for dead as a result of a small change drug deal gone sour outside some barroom.
I knew “the Macho Man” going back to his amateur days, almost to the time when he was a comical but hot-headed teenaged car thief in East Harlem. What I will remember, what we should all remember is how he lived.
Life was pretty much a party or a party waiting to happen. In his early ring years, boxing was a party for him as well.
With wicked hand and foot speed and ring generalship that was no less than awesome, Camacho looked like and considered himself not only unbeatable but also untouchable between the ropes.
Then came a June night (1986) in a steamy Madison Square Garden when hammer-hitting Edwin “Chapo” Rosario, the Puerto Rican slugger, gave the loudmouthed “Nuyorican” a beating.
Yes, officially, Camacho remained unbeaten. Two judges (Stuart Kirshenbaum and Tony Castellano) favored Camacho with razor thin 115-113 cards. Luis Rivera, a Puerto Rican ex-fighter judging two “homeboys,” gave the always aggressive Rosario two point margins in the fifth and eleventh rounds and the fight, 114-113.
I covered the bout for The New York Post and believe I favored Macho by a single point. Like most of the sellout Garden crowd, I had the gnawing feeling that “Chapo” was cheated when the ballots were counted.
Camacho, bruised and battered like never before, spoke to Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated after the Rosario escape and said, “”If I fight him again,” growled Camacho the next morning, “I want a million dollars. If I’m gonna come out looking like a Cabbage Patch doll, I want to get paid for it.”
Generally a Good Humor man, even at his own expense, Camacho said Rosario “fought me like he’s mad at me.”
From then on, naysayers claimed he ran more in the ring than he fought. I couldn’t help but notice that most critics were corpulent cowards who only went into the ring if they were in a jewelry store.
No one, not his worst critics, ever claimed he was not entertaining.
Camacho could fight, no make that could box, like the devil. And, like most of us, he was no angel in how he conducted his life. The left handed Camacho had a textbook jab, a real thing of boxing beauty.
He ditched his boyhood trainers, Robert Lee Velez and colorful Billy Giles and he had constant disputes with various promoters. He had domestic disputes and drug related arrests, one of the craziest coming in Mississippi when he broke through a skylight and into a computer repair shop because he claimed they were unjustly withholding his property.
All these scraps and scrapes, sure, but Camacho was a carouser. In that sense, he reminded me of hapless Neon Leon Spinks in that they both got into one mess after another but never with the intention of hurting someone else.
Camacho and his lively posse never seemed to wear wristwatches.
Why else would he bellow, “What time is it?”
And why would he and his groupies always repsond thunderously, “Macho time!”
Time is running out now for Camacho and his lovely mother, Maria, may have to make the heart-wrenching decision to take him off life support.
The medical report from San Juan was not optimistic Wednesday:
“The changes have been more negative than positive,” a doctor said.
The doctor noted that not enough blood was coursing through Camacho’s brain. Maybe Hector thinks Rosario is on the attack…again.
A sad ending to his life, sure, but let’s dwell on the pyrotechnic life and career of this son of Bayamon and Spanish Harlem.
There was a rose in Spanish Harlem and boxing’s own special rose was “the Macho Man.” Like a crack in the sidewalk on East 116th Street, Camacho bloomed in the ring.
Not too many troubled kids once locked up on Rikers Island move on to World Championship Island but Hector did.
Remember how brilliantly he lived, that’s what matters.
My clock says it’s still “Macho time.”
