Toro de Cayey fought some great fighters, he won and lost at Lightweight to the great Lou Ambers, KO'd Freddie 'Red' Cochrane and had a brutal fight at Welterweight with the one and only Henry Armstrong.
I have him ranked at # 5 in the all time list of Puerto Rican’s fighters.
Carlos Ortiz, Wilfredo Gomez, Wilfredo Benitez, Felix Trinidad, and Pedro Montanez are my top five. Montanez was a great fighter and according to some observers he should’ve got the decision against Ambers.
Ric- hey-i've seen that photo before...i've seen about 3 or 4 pics of the two together. He spoke well of your grandpa and always maintained that Pete never received the credit he deserved. In fact- among the best bantamwts he saw, he said that only Al Brown, Sixto Escobar, Eder Jofre, and Carlos Zarate were better than Pete.
An interesting thing about his HOF election- by the 1970's, he kinda gave up hope on making it in and maintained that "...if it took more than 20 yrs to get elected...well, then he didn't deserve it." He just felt that one's peers were the ones who should decide who gets in. And, BTW, he always felt that Sixto Escobar was better than he. He was jealous of the way Sixto could turn and spin an opponent.
torodecayey wrote:Ric- hey-i've seen that photo before...i've seen about 3 or 4 pics of the two together. He spoke well of your grandpa and always maintained that Pete never received the credit he deserved. In fact- among the best bantamwts he saw, he said that only Al Brown, Sixto Escobar, Eder Jofre, and Carlos Zarate were better than Pete.
Thank you very much for those wonderful words. They mean all the world to me. I'd love to have scans of the other photos you may have of the two together.
You should submit a bio of Pedro (with a "whatever became of him" section) in his wiki page.
Ric- i am trying to locate the photos- it's been years since i saw them and i'm not sure who has them. He had hundreds of photos - who knows where some of them ended up. I know for sure of at least 2 with Sanstol, including one of Pedro Pete and Sixto together b4 their match- which he says was an unbelievable fight.
torodecayey wrote: I know for sure of at least 2 with Sanstol, including one of Pedro, Pete and Sixto together b4 their match- which he says was an unbelievable fight.
Are you saying that there may be a photo of Pete, Pedro, and Sixto all together around the time of the August 7, 1935 Escobar-Sanstol world title bout in Montreal?
I have a newspaper account from Pete's scrapbooks that reports Pete's first American manager Lew Burston--who "discovered" Pete in Paris in 1926/27--was in Montreal with "new client" Joseph Decico for that Escobar-Sanstol bout. As you probably know, Burston was your grandfather's manager.
