Marcel Cerdan Junior, son of the French boxing legend, died Friday at the age of 81, AFP learned from the president of the French Boxing Federation, confirming information from the newspaper L'Équipe. Ill for several years, Cerdan Jr himself had a career as a boxer in the 1960s. According to the reference site boxrec, he finished his professional career with a record of 56 victories (including 18 before the limit) for 3 draws and 5 defeats.
“He had an honorable career. Even if he did not have the physical qualities of his father, he tried to resemble him with the means that were his.“, explained to AFP the president of FFBoxe Dominique Nato. “He was a real star of boxing in France in the 60s. He was a great technician who notably made the glory days of the Wagram gym“, added the specialist journalist Jean-Philippe Lustyk. Eldest son of the boxing legend, Cerdan Jr was only five years old in October 1949 when his father died in a plane crashas he left for the United States to try to regain the world middleweight crown.
Marcel Cerdan Jr grew up without his father but with… Edith Piaf
Once retired, Cerdan Jr notably contributed to keeping alive the memory of his father whom he “revered”, according to Dominique Nato. He played the role of his father in the film Edith and Marcel of Claude Lelouchreleased in 1983, replacing Patrick Dewaere who died shortly before filming. In 2000 he published an autobiography titled Piaf and me published by Flammarion, in which he talks about this woman who was not his blood mother and gave him so much too.
-In interview for The Dispatchhe confided in the disappearance of his father and the relationship that would emerge between his mistress and his own mother. About his mother who had to raise him alone with his brothers when Marcel Cerdan died, he explains: “My father, although he was always generous to many people, had invested quite a bit of money. He had bought a café, a farm, a dairy. It was a different time and my mother was very surrounded by her family. We were in Morocco and there, we live in a clan, at least we lived like that.“
The mother of Marcel Cerdan Jr., Marinette, had agreed to receive Edith Piaf in 1950 : the star, arriving loaded with gifts, made friends with her lover's wife. “For us kids, in forty-eight hours she became 'Auntie Edith'. Four months later, Marinette and the three children, me six and a half years old, René four years old and Paul two years old, arrived at Edith's private mansion in Boulogne. She had us custom dressed by Ted Lapidus. It was my mother who, when I was 14, sent me to Edith to live there and complete my education..” Son of an icon, Marcel Cerdan Jr. had rubbed shoulders with icons, while retaining all his humility.
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