CARACAS, Venezuela – THE boxing world was stunned yesterday (Apr. 19) as news broke that ex-WBC lightweight champion of the world Edwin Valero killed his wife and then hanged himself in his jail cell after being detained by police.
Valero has been known both as an outstanding fighter and a troubled man throughout his career, but fans and commentators in the boxing world expressed great shock when news first began to break early yesterday that the 28-year-old fighter had confessed to murdering his wife, 24-year-old Jennifer Carolina Viera, in a Valencia hotel room.
According to reports from the Associated Press, Valero left the hotel room around dawn on Sunday morning (Apr. 18) and told staff there that he had killed his wife. She was reportedly stabbed three times and Valero was immediately taken into custody by officers from the local precinct.
While awaiting charges in the case, Valero then removed his sweat pants and hanged himself in the holding cell. Another inmate in the jail alerted guards of noise coming from Valero’s cell, Federal Police Chief Wilmer Flores told the media.
Though staff reached Valero while he was still alive, he eventually succumbed to his injuries around 1:30 a.m. yesterday.
The Venezuela fighter known adoringly as ‘Inca’ had been in and out of trouble with the law throughout his rise to fame, with charges ranging from drugs and alcohol to suspected domestic abuse against Viera.
On March 25 of this year, the AP reported that the fighter was “charged with harassing his wife and threatening medical personnel” at a hospital where Viera was being treated for a punctured lung and broken ribs that she claimed to have acquired from a fall.
Though prosecutors had asked for Valero to be detained after he was charged, a judge sitting on the case allowed him to go free under certain circumstances, including a reported nine day stay at a mental institution in Merida.
Friends and family posted bail for Valero on April 7, a decision that his manager Jose Castillo lambasted as reckless given the fighter’s mental state.
“I asked the authorities not to let him out. He needed a lot of help. He was very bad in the head, but they let him out. They were very permissive with him, and because of that we're now in the middle of this tragedy,” the AP reported Castillo as saying.
News of Valero’s suicide no doubt dampened celebrations of Venezuela’s 200th year as an independent nation that were held yesterday. The fighter had a large tattoo of the nation’s flag and President Hugo Chavez across his chest and was regarded by many as a national hero for his rise to fame from poverty.
Valero was a fierce competitor with a relentless style and at the time of his death held a record of 27-0, all of which came from knockout. He won his first professional title in 2006 with a tenth-round TKO victory over Vincente Mosquera to become the WBA super featherweight champion.
After defending his title successfully four times, Valero moved up to lightweight and fought Antonio Pitalua in April 2009 for the vacant WBC lightweight belt. Pitalua suffered a punishing defeat when he was knocked out in the second round and Valero would go on to successfully defend the belt twice.
The WBC announced in February after Valero’s second title defense that he had chosen to abandon the belt and move up once again in weight class. He was seen as a promising prospect for his relentless style and sheer punching power.
Valero’s promoter and founder of Top Rank Bob Arum said that he had not initially seen the signs of great trouble with the fighter, but “in retrospect, he clearly should have been getting help”.
