Photos of Edwin Valero funeral

Venezuela Says Good Bye to Edwin Valero!

The two time world champion Edwin Valero said goodbye to Venezuela yesterday as he was buried in his hometown of El Vigia, Venezuela.

With chants of “Champion, Champion”, the body of Edwin Valero was toured in this small town as it was taken to the gym where he learned to box, the local church, to the humble home where he grew up an finally to the cemetery, all the way accompanied by a multitude of his countrymen who came to pay their last respects to quite possibly the best Venezuelan boxer of all time.

An avalanche of sentiments were felt by all those present as they struggled to say goodbye to a man who brought them great joy as a fighter but disgust as a human being and his crimes.

“I am angry, he committed a heinous crime. He killed his wife and left his children without a mother but he is still a champion. He put the name of this town, of Merida, of the country in front of the whole world,” Alejandro Martinez, a fan who assisted the burial, stated. “His punches, how he fought, it was spectacular. He could have beaten Manny Pacquiao. His attitude, his aggressiveness, he was going to go far in boxing. You can’t forget that, two time world champion, undefeated. He killed, yes, but I applaud him and I cry for him because he was a great athlete.”

“I am a woman and I don’t forgive him but I do recognize that he was a great athlete,” Victoria Ramirez, another fan, said. “I am angry because of these tears he has made me cry. I remember the joy he will give me when I would watch him fight, when he would win but he finished with his family, he took away the smile of his children.”

More than three thousand people attended the event with everybody trying to touch the coffin as soon as it reached the cemetery where the unbeaten champion was to be buried.

Photos by REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins