Jose “Chegui” Torres was one of New York’s renaissance men: world cham pion athlete, trend-setter, government official, journalist and author.
Torres, who died Monday of a heart attack in his native Puerto Rico at 72, enjoyed a post-athletic career that eclipsed even his status as the first Latino ever to win the world light-heavyweight boxing title – at a time when each weight class had only one champion.
He got his writing start on the pages of The Post, where he became the first Hispanic columnist for a major English-language paper.
But unlike other ex-jocks, Torres didn’t want to write about sports – his was a political column, appearing on the op-ed pages, in which he opened many readers’ eyes to life in El Barrio.
Eventually, he turned to the world of boxing, writing celebrated biographies of Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. During the Cuomo administration, he became the first Hispanic (and first former boxer) ever to chair the New York State Athletic Commission.
He was as much at home in literary circles – surrounded by the likes of Pete Hamill, Budd Schulberg and Norman Mailer – as he was in Gleason’s Gym. Over the decades, he befriended and nurtured both aspiring journalists and up-and-coming fighters.
Jose Torres was revered both in Spanish Harlem and in Puerto Rico, which has declared three days of mourning for him. Appropriately so.