HispanicBusiness

Former light-heavyweight world champion, Olympic silver medalist and author Jose Torres died Monday of a heart attack at his home in Puerto Rico at the age of 72, his wife, Ramonita, said.

The mayor of Ponce, on Puerto Rico's southern coast, ordered flags flown at half-staff and declared three days of mourning for Torres, who will be buried there Thursday.

In 1965, Torres won the light-heavyweight mantle in a fight against Willie Pastrano at New York's Madison Square Garden. He successfully defended his title three times before losing to Dick Tiger in 1966. He ended with a record of 41-3-1, with 29 knockouts.

"Puerto Rico has lost a great Puerto Rican, a very valiant person who aside from being a great athlete was a great human being," David Bernier, president of the U.S. territory's Olympic committee, told a radio station in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Torres, born on May 3, 1936, began his boxing career when, as a teen, he joined the U.S. Army. In the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, he won a silver medal as a light middleweight while competing for the United States.

After retiring from the ring in 1969, he became a representative for the Puerto Rican community in New York, headed the New York State Athletic Commission during the 1980s and was the supervisor for the World Boxing Organization. He worked as an aide to Paul O'Dwyer, then-president of the New York City Council, for several years and later assisted Andrew Stein, borough president of Manhattan.

During his professional career, according to published reports, Torres struck up friendships with writers, including Norman Mailer, and he began writing a column for the New York Post, often focusing on Hispanic issues.

He sparked controversy in the 1990s when, as an aide to New York Mayor David Dinkins, he claimed then-mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani appealed to the Ku Klux Klan.

Torres wrote two biographies, "Sting Like a Bee" on Muhammad Ali and "Fire and Fear" on Mike Tyson. Mailer wrote the preface to the Ali book.

In a prepared statement, New York Gov. David Paterson said: "Through his boxing, writing and speaking out on the important issues of our time, Jose was an inspiration to millions of people across the country and around the world."

In 1997, Torres was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.