Ricardo Mayorga

Ricardo Mayorga has been a heavy drinker and smoker. He has faced a lot of flak in the media for being a ‘loose morale public figure’. He has also been very notorious for provoking his opponents through making some nonsense comments on them right before the fights.

Ricardo dated Shelshia Hislot for a long time before marrying her in 2003. As Ricardo keeps getting in fights in public places, his wife has been his sole pillar of strength and sorts out things for him.

He was born on October 3, 1973 to Eddy and Miriam, who lived in Managua, Nicaragua. The family struggled with finances. His father had a small bakery shop and his mother was a housewife. Ricardo had a rough childhood and he grew up amidst fistfights almost every other day.

These poor conditions made him tough and he grew up to be a very short tempered, ferocious teenager. He admired his father for all the hardships that he went through to provide for the family. When he was growing up, almost every essential commodity such as electricity, clean water and medical services were scarce in the city.

Ricardo did his early schooling from his hometown, and as he had already developed a knack for fighting and bodybuilding, he was never good at studies.

To make the matters worse, he got into the habit of smoking and drinking. While he was in a military school in Managua, one of his teachers asked him to try his hands at sports, but sadly it was found that Ricardo wasn’t particularly good at sports either. All he enjoyed was getting into brawls and fights and that’s what compelled him to learn boxing. His elder brother Jaime was already a boxer and this helped him a bit.

On 29th August 1993, in a Costa Rican ring, Ricardo made his professional boxing debut; he faced a seasoned boxed Humberto Aranda. But he was still an amateur by then and didn’t have enough confidence or skills to tackle a boxer as good and what made it worse was the fact that he wasn’t taking enough sleep at that time, owing to a night job. He was knocked out in the sixth round but holding on the fight even after being on the receiving end of some deadly punches showed a promise, that given the right training, he could very quickly turn the tables.

And he did just that, he trained harder than ever and took lessons from his brother on boxing and in all the fights he participated in 1994, he emerged a victor. The next year as well was highly successful for him, he won all the fights he fought in but quite unexpectedly, he took a temporary retirement from the sport for two years after that. After going through and managing some very difficult financial conditions, Mayorga made his comeback into the ring in 1998. At that time, Afrain Durain supported him in his promotions and as a result of the financial support, Mayorga returned in a beastly form.

In 2000, Mayorga saw the best phase of his professional boxing career with almost half a dozen consecutive wins, including one against Alfonso Salazar, in a match organized by WBA as a promotional event for the ‘KO to Drugs’ campaign. The win over Salazar got him into the good list of manager Don King and in March 2002, he got his very first title shot for Don King Promotions against Andrew Lewis for the Welterweight championship, which he won.

In the very next year, Ricardo won the lineal welterweight title and later that year, he got his hands on IBF welterweight title. His boxing career was at its very peak and Ricardo was unstoppable and retained his titles for long periods. In March 2011, he won the WBA light middleweight title. In the total 43 professional boxing matches that he has participated in, he has won 32 of them and lost 9. 26 of his wins were results of knockouts, telling a lot about his fierce style of fighting.

In May 2010, he was to make his very first entry into the MMA ring at Shine Fights, against Din Thomas, an experienced fighter but a contract he signed with Don King, kept him away from making his MMA debut. Don King promotions stated that the contract didn’t allow Ricardo to take part in the MMA fights and it was exclusively for the boxing matches. However, Ricardo didn’t like it and quit boxing in order to make a career in MMA, a far more financially viable option, which also allowed him to fight freestyle, just like he wanted.