Combat sports like MMA and boxing often attract some violent people. If they, like Muhammad Ali, can channel their anger and aggression into the sport, then they can succeed and probably not end up in prison. Unfortunately for Edwin Valero, his promising career was cut short due to his violent deeds.

A look at Edwin Valero’s career

As Bleacher Report said, Valero, who started boxing professionally in 2002 at the age of 21, quickly made a name for himself. He was very intense and very aggressive, and every punch that he threw had power behind it.

It’s no surprise then that, in the 27 fights that he had in his career, not only did he never lose one, but he also won all of them by knockout. 

This remarkable knockout streak was record-breaking as well, according to Bleacher Report. In the first 18 fights of Valero’s professional career, he won all of them by first-round knockout. Knocking so many of his opponents out in the first round just shows how powerful and dominant he was.

On top of that, Bleacher Report said that, after Valero won the WBC lightweight title in 2009, he became the only champion in the 30-year history of the WBC to have won every single fight by knockout. Other great boxers who had won a WBC belt, such as Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, had not accomplished this feat. 

That said, Valero was still relatively fresh in his boxing career. He had 27 fights, but most of those fights were against low-level opponents in his home country. Valero was only beginning to fight other good boxers before the unthinkable happened. 

Edwin Valero allegedly murders his wife

As it turns out, all the aggression that Valero showed in the ring was also present in his personal life. Valero had a criminal history, which included assaulting people, including his wife. On April 18, 2010, according to Bleacher Report, Valero’s wife was found stabbed to death in a hotel room. She was 24 years old.

Just like in many other unfortunate domestic violence situations, the husband was the first suspect. In this case, Valero was arrested the following morning, and Bleacher Report says that he even admitted to the authorities that he did it. The next day, however, Valero died by suicide while he was in jail. He was 28 years old.

As a result of this tragic turn of events, we will never know who killed Valero’s wife, and some conspiracy theorists in the boxing world even think that Valero was murdered when he was in jail. We will also never know what caused Valero to potentially go down this dark path, though, given his criminal history, the writing may have been on the wall.

What could’ve been

Mike Tyson is a good example of what could’ve happened with Valero had he not spiraled out of control. Tyson was also an aggressive and heavy-punching boxer who had a lot of issues, to say the least. While Tyson did serve time in prison for committing rape, he has become a better man nowadays. 

Valero, as Bleacher Report said, was well on his way to fighting great boxers like Pacquiao, too. Pacquiao was at the top of the world and he was fighting in the same weight classes that Valero was fighting in. Valero was a heavy-puncher, but he wasn’t a perfect boxer, so analysts were giving the edge to Pacquiao, according to Bleacher Report.

Regardless, Valero had a decent chance of knocking Pacquiao out. And, if Valero had fought Pacquiao or other high-level opponents instead of doing what he did, then he may have become one of the top boxers of the modern era. But, we will never know.