José “Chegüi” Torres, former light heavyweight boxing champion and a close friend of the Mailer family, died of a heart attack on January 19 at his home in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He was 72.
Torres won the world light heavyweight title on March 30, 1965, defeating Willie Pastrano, and Mailer threw the victory party at his apartment in Brooklyn Heights. The friendship that began there lasted the rest of their lives. That summer Mailer flew to San Juan to see Torres fight Tom McNeeley, a trip remembered for Mailer’s arm-wrestling match with Muhammad Ali. The two men later boxed each other on The Dick Cavett Show.
After the ring, Torres became a writer. Mailer helped edit his biography of Ali in Vermont in June 1971 and wrote its preface, arguing that champion boxers are highly intelligent men; the book appeared that year as Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story.
Obituaries are in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The L.A. Times.
In Works and Days
- José Torres — the 1965 championship, the victory party, and the friendship that followed.
- “Clay, Mailer in ‘Draw’” — the San Juan visit for the Torres–McNeeley fight, August 1965.
- Preface to …Sting Like a Bee — Mailer on Torres’s biography of Ali (1971).
- Muhammad Ali