ROCKY HILL, Conn., Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Willie Pep, a featherweight who became one of boxing's greats, has died at the age of 84 at a Connecticut nursing home.
Pep, who was in the Haven Health Center in Rocky Hill, suffered from Alzheimer's disease, his family told the Hartford Courant. He died Thursday.
Nicknamed "Will o' the Wisp" for his glancing style, Pep had a 135-1-1 record in his first 137 professional fights and lost only 11 times in his career. He was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.
"He was a moonbeam," Bert Randolph Sugar, a boxing historian, told the Courant. "You couldn't catch him. ... Pep was music in the ring. People were rhapsodic over him."
Born William Papaleo, Pep told an interviewer in 2000 that he learned how to fight as a shoeshine boy in Hartford, where he had to defend his corner.
"I weighed about 89 pounds soaking wet," he said. "The big guys would pick on me and so I had to fight them. Once you fight them they will leave you alone."
