Jorge “Locomotora” Castro died this Wednesday morning at 59 after decompensating at the Bingo de Morón, ending the life of one of Argentina’s best-known former boxing champions. Sources from the Ministerio de Seguridad said a 911 call brought a mobile command unit from the Morón patrol to the venue on calle San Martín, where staff had reported a man who had collapsed in the machine area.
Medical assistance later confirmed that Castro had died, and the case was placed under the intervention of UFI N.º 8 de Morón for an investigation into the cause of death. The loss lands now because Castro was still a recognizable public figure, not only for his ring career but also for the charitable work that kept him in view long after he stopped fighting.
Castro was born in Caleta Olivia in 1967 and built a career that moved quickly through the levels of boxing: the Argentine middleweight title in 1989, the South American championship in 1990 and the WBA middleweight world title on 12 August 1994, when he beat Reggie Johnson in San Miguel de Tucumán. Months later, on 10 December 1994 in Monterrey, he defeated John David Jackson after landing a left hook that sent the American down. Those wins made him a national name, and in recent years he kept that profile through appearances on Gran Hermano and MasterChef Celebrity.
That public life had another side. For years he supported comedores and merenderos in the conurbano bonaerense, and after leaving MasterChef Celebrity he said he had four comedores in Lomas de Zamora and supplied 10 more with food. In another interview, he said his work helping people with food began during the Covid-19 pandemic. He also said he had bought a gym in Temperley in March and could not open it for a year and a half, so he started an olla popular for 30 people and found that more than 60 came. “En casa somos ocho con mis hijos y mis nietos,” he said of his own household, underscoring how close the work was to his daily life.
The unanswered question is why he decompensated. Sources point to diabetes as a possible factor, but the exact cause has not been established, and that is now what the judicial review must sort out. For his family, the boxing public and the people who came to rely on his food aid, the story is no longer about how he lived in the public eye; it is about what finally caused his collapse in Morón, and whether the investigation can put a precise name to it.
