FINAL FAREWELL: Maria Matias, mother of former boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho, touches her son’s casket. (REUTERS)
Hector “Machito” Camacho, son of boxing legend Hector “Macho Camacho,” bends at the foot of his father’s grave (Jennifer L. Gonzeles)
She just couldn’t accept it was the final round.
The wailing mom of slain boxing champ Hector (Macho) Camacho had to be dragged kicking and screaming from her son’s grave in The Bronx this morning after she refused to leave him when the service ended.
The inconsolable mom, Maria Matias, flailed her arms and fought back mourners who grabbed her as she vainly tried to return to her son’s petal strewn casket at St. Raymond’s Cemetery shortly before noon.
“My star. My star,” she screamed in Spanish, before she collapsed and was carried away, her arms outstretched in a prone position, to a waiting stretch limo.
But moments later Camacho’s brother, Ponchito, who was in the limo with his mother, yelled “Cardiac!”
An FDNY ambulance, which was on the scene, gave the unconscious woman oxygen and took her away in an ambulance.
She was taken to Jacobi Hospital, and listed in stable condition after suffering a panic attack, FDNY sources said,
It was a family affair of raw emotional outbursts throughout the day as the final bell tolled for the famous pugilist.
Camacho’s son, Christian, also lost it in front of hundreds of mourners and fans who braved the chill air to attend the brief grave side service.
“How could you do this to me? I’m his son. You’re the devil,” he yelled.
Even before the Spanish Harlem legend’s coffin was interred a few family members quietly argued and decided not to confront a woman there and question her about $125,000 missing from a bank.
Camacho, 50, was fatally shot while sitting in his car in Bayamon Puerto Rico on Nov. 20.
This morning a funeral mass was held at St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church in East Harlem.
Some 300 mourners attended that service, while hundreds of others stood behind police barricades for a final glimpse of the homegrown hero’s Puerto Rico flag-draped casket.
Even then emotions ran high. Camacho’s grieving sister complained of chest pains and was taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital. His son, Comachito, walked into the church, looked at his father’s closed casket but was too over wrought and left before mass.
Camacho’s past romantic entangles took another surprise left hook when a third woman came forward claiming she was his long time lover.
Shelly Salemassi, 50, said she flew in from Detroit to say farewell to the man she had spent Christmas with last year and had known for 16 years.
“Macho I owned his heart,” she said. “I’m sure eventually we would have wound up together.”
The recently widowed mother said she and Camacho had a long distance relationship, but that the pair had spent time together just a few months ago.
She dissed the two girlfriends back in Puerto Rico who began swinging at each other at his wake. Salemassi said “He would have been very embarrassed by it.”