Everything about Manuel Velazquez totally explained
Manuel Velazquez (
December 6,
1904 - January
1994) was a 20th-century anti-
boxing activist who kept meticulous files on boxing-related deaths.
Early life
Manuel Velazquez was born in
Tampa, Florida. When Velazquez was about 10 years old he and his family moved to
Chicago, Illinois. At 15 he dropped out of school and began work at a railroad roundhouse (a sort of garage for locomotives) in
Oak Park, Illinois. At 19 he joined the
Illinois National Guard, Company F, 131st Infantry. He served from 1924-1925, then moved back to Tampa and worked on a
trolley car.
Association with boxing
In Tampa, Velazquez befriended middleweight boxer
Manuel Quintero and consequently spent significant time in the gym. In 1927 Velazquez moved to
New York City and worked on a trolley on
Sixth Avenue in
Manhattan and then as a conductor on the
New York City Subway system. During his time in New York he befriended boxer and fellow Floridian
Pete Nebo.
Nebo retired at 27 and moved to
Key West, Florida, where he was arrested in 1938 for assaulting a man who called him "punchy." The court determined that Nebo was mentally incompetent due to boxing injuries, and on September 1 he was involuntarily committed to
Florida State Hospital at
Chattahoochie.
Velazquez subsequently began collecting data on boxing injuries, and as a result of what he learned he began to oppose the sport.
Later life
In 1938 he'd to quit his subway job due to
multiple sclerosis. The disease forced him to use a cane starting in 1939. Still, he continued to work, finding employment in the
Federal civil service in 1940. This job took him around the country, including stops in
New York,
St. Louis, Missouri,
Arlington, Virginia and
Fort Benjamin Harrison.
After his retirement in 1959, Velazquez lived in government-subsidized housing in Tampa. Later he moved to
Arizona, and finally to
Greenville, Illinois where he died at the age of 89.
Legacy
Shortly before his death, Velazquez sent his files to
Robert W. Smith, who, along with
Andrew Guterman, had written an article called "Neurological Sequalae of Boxing," published in the journal
Sports Medicine (4 [1987], 194-210)
(External Link
). The collection passed to
Joseph R. Svinth in the mid-1990s. Svinth maintains an ongoing project called "Death Under the Spotlight: The Manuel Velazquez Boxing Fatality Collection," which documents "Western" boxing deaths since 1741.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Manuel Velazquez'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://manuel_velazquez.totallyexplained.com">Manuel Velazquez Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
