Manuel Velazquez

Manuel Velazquez (December 6, 1904 – January 1994) was an American 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 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. 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.

Footnotes