Graziano Hospitalized After Collapsing
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NEW YORK — Former world middleweight champion Rocky Graziano has been hospitalized after collapsing at home, according to his family.
Graziano, 68, was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital after he “went limp all over” Sunday at his apartment, his daughter, Audrey Weisman, said.
“It doesn’t look good,” Weisman said. “He collapsed totally--physically and mentally.”
Doctors didn’t reveal a diagnosis.
Weisman said Graziano went to the hospital last week for a checkup and “came home the next day worse than he had ever been.”
Graziano, born Thomas Rocco Barbella on Manhattan’s lower East Side, began his professional boxing career in 1942 and fought champion Tony Zale for the middleweight title on Sept. 27, 1946.
Zale won by a knockout, but Graziano knocked out Zale in six rounds to win the title 10 months later. He lost it in June 1948 when Zale knocked him out in the third round of their third and last fight.
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