Éder Jofre Returned From Retirement to Win a Second
Éder Jofre won the WBC featherweight championship by outpointing José Legrá in Brasília on May 5, 1973. The victory completed a comeback that followed his earlier reign as world bantamweight champion.
The bantamweight championship years
The São Paulo boxer reached the quarterfinals at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and turned professional in 1957. He knocked out Eloy Sanchez in the sixth round in Los Angeles on November 18, 1960, to win the vacant NBA bantamweight title.
A tenth-round stoppage of Piero Rollo in 1961 brought wider world championship recognition. Fighting Harada ended Jofre’s reign by decision in Nagoya in May 1965 and won their Tokyo rematch in June 1966. Jofre then retired temporarily.
The featherweight comeback and Hall of Fame
Jofre returned in 1969 and built a fourteen-fight winning run before defeating Legrá over fifteen rounds. He defended the featherweight belt with a fourth-round knockout of Vicente Saldivar that October.
His final retirement came in 1976 with seventy-two wins, two defeats and four draws. He entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992.
Jofre turned professional on his twenty-first birthday. After his featherweight championship was withdrawn for inactivity in 1974, he won seven further non-title bouts. He finished with fifty knockout victories and was never himself stopped during his professional career.
