Eleóncio Mercedes

Eleoncio Mercedes’ Olympic career was brief. He lost to the Soviet Aleksandr Tkachenko in just over ninety seconds. But Mercedes won silver in the light-flyweight class one year before at the 1975 Pan American Games when he lost the final to Jorge Hernández.

Re-locating to the USA he turned professional but initially met with little success and lost five of his first eight bouts. A run of eleven fights with just one defeat meant that he crept into the lower reaches of the world rankings and was chosen to fight Mexico’s Freddy Castillo in Castillo’s first defence of his WBC world flyweight title. Mercedes would go on to cause a major surprise and earn a unanimous points decision over Castillo. His reign as world champion lasted little more than four months and he lost his title on a technical knock-out to Charlie Magri.

Mercedes died in December 1985 when, after a night’s drinking, he was involved in a road traffic accident. After an altercation with a policeman Mercedes allegedly pulled out a gun and was shot dead by the policeman.