{"id":19517,"date":"2012-06-12T13:42:11","date_gmt":"2012-06-12T10:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=19517"},"modified":"2012-06-12T13:47:53","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T10:47:53","slug":"legendary-cuban-boxing-champion-teofilo-stevenson-dies19517","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/legendary-cuban-boxing-champion-teofilo-stevenson-dies19517\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary Cuban Boxing Champion Teofilo Stevenson Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Former Cuban heavyweight boxer Teofilo Stevenson, who won three Olympic gold medals, has died at the age of 60.<\/h1>\n

State media said he had suffered a heart attack.\u00a0In the 1970s, US boxing promoters offered Stevenson $5m (\u00a33m) to turn professional and fight then world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.\u00a0But the boxer stayed loyal to the Cuban revolution, which outlawed professional sports, and refused. He said: “I prefer the affection of eight million Cubans.”<\/p>\n

Stevenson was born in Las Tunas province in eastern Cuba and fought his first bout at the age of 14.<\/h2>\n

He went on to win gold medals as a heavyweight in three consecutive Olympic Games – 1972 in Munich, 1976 in Montreal and 1980 in Moscow – and was widely considered the greatest amateur boxer of his time.<\/p>\n

“The Olympic Games in Munich and Montreal are the fondest memories I have from my life, the best stage of my career,” he told AP news agency earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Boxing fans were keen to see him go up against Muhammad Ali in what they hoped would be the “fight of the century”, but Stevenson turned the offer down.<\/p>\n

The boxer – known in Cuba by the nickname “Pirolo” – missed a shot at a fourth Olympic gold when Cuba joined the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

He announced his retirement in 1988 after Cuba decided to skip the Seoul Olympics as well.<\/p>\n

After retiring, Stevenson became a coach and served as vice president of the Cuban Boxing Federation.<\/p>\n

Reporting his death, state newspaper Juventud Rebelde said Cuban sport had lost “one of its greatest exponents of all time”.<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 10)<\/span>\n

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Former Cuban heavyweight boxer Teofilo Stevenson, who won three Olympic gold medals, has died at the age of 60.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,1,118,14],"tags":[24870,24875,24868,24872,24871,24866,24865,24874,24869,24876,24864,24867,24873],"class_list":["post-19517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-world","tag-3-time-olympic-champion-teofilo-stevenson","tag-boxing-cuba-teofilo-stevenson","tag-cuba-teofilo-stevenson","tag-cuban-boxing-federation","tag-cuban-boxing-federation-teofilo-stevenson","tag-former-cuban-heavyweight-boxer-teofilo-stevenson","tag-legendary-cuban-boxing-champion-teofilo-stevenson","tag-muhammad-ali-teofilo-stevenson","tag-olympic-champion-teofilo-stevenson","tag-olympic-games-teofilo-stevenson","tag-teofilo-stevenson","tag-teofilo-stevenson-cuba","tag-the-olympic-games-in-munich-and-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}