Late Sunday night, former WBO heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison passed away in Omaha, Neb. He was just 44years-old.
The longtime promoter for Morrison, Tony Holden, said that “The Duke” died at 11:50 p.m. with his wife at his side. He declined to go into further details on Monday about the cause of death.
It was back in 1996 that Tommy Morrison tested positive before his scheduled fight with Arthur Weathers. That result was basically the end of his career as a boxer. However, over the following years, he would repeatedly deny that he had the disease, and would state that the virus did not even exist.
His wife, Trisha Morrison, also backed up the claims of her husband. In a recent interview with ESPN.com, she claimed that it was Guillain-Barre Syndrome that was the cause of her husband’s illness, rather than HIV.
“I don’t know what the official cause of death at the hospital will be,” Holden said.
“You prepare for things like this, and still you feel like you got hit by a truck when you hear the news.”
Tommy Morrison achieved his greatest heights in boxing back in 1993 when he defeated George Foreman to claim the WBO version of the heavyweight title. He would lose it to Lennox Lewis in 1995.
For most people, their first exposure to Morrison came a few years earlier when he appeared in “Rocky V.” His character was “Tommy Gunn,” a young boxer who looks to Rocky Balboa to train him. In the movie, he would go on to win the heavyweight title, but after a falling out with Balboa, would lose to him in a “street fight.”
Stay tuned to PBI for more information and tributes to “The Duke” in the coming days.
