Carmen Basilio, the welterweight and middleweight boxing champion of the 1950s who fought two brutal bouts with Sugar Ray Robinson, winning his middleweight title and then losing it to him, died Wednesday in Rochester. Basilio, who lived in Irondequoit, a suburb of Rochester, was 85.
His death was announced by the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., where Basilio was born. He was among its first class of inductees in 1990.
They called him the Upstate Onion Farmer — his Italian immigrant father worked the onion fields near Syracuse — but from the time he was a youngster, Basilio wanted nothing more than to be a pro boxer. He became a champion with an unrelenting style of attack, willing to take punishment as well as dish it out.