He late francism It was a period of opening in which the previous regime, eager to show the world its kinder face, strove to export Spanish talent in any field of popular culture. From The Cordovan a massiel, with their little diplomatic help to succeed in Eurovision, going through some athletes who began to sprout by spontaneous generation in the national paramera. One of them, surely the most pampered since El Pardo, was the boxer José Manuel Ibar Azpiazu, Urtain on the posters for the name of the village where he was born and Morrosko de Cestona for the Guipuzcoan village in which he excelled as a rural athlete.
It was summer the ax -log splitter- and stone thrower -lifter of stones-, a discipline in which he managed to hoist blocks of 250 kilos and to complete a series, record in its time, of 192 liftings of a hundredweight. The discoverer of his boxing skills, Jose Lizarazuwas a skilled businessman from San Sebastian who made him debut on the ring at the respectable age of 25 years in a fight against a package that he dispatched in fifteen seconds. From such a striking premiere, the National Sports Delegation, dependent on the Falange, took control of his career until it led him to the heavyweight continental title.
The Gipuzkoan boxer’s career was meteoric. In just eighteen months, he rose through the ranks until he earned the right to fight for the European Heavyweight Championship. Thanks to your mammoth punch, to a large extent, but without detracting from the twenty long rivals of medium hair that a Spanish Federation helped him at the service of his cause. His first twenty-four bouts ended before the limit, the latest in the sixth round, as far as the Guinean endured in Irún Macan Keita, although it is true that none of his opponents have their own chapter in boxing history. Not even a measly line.
Peter Weiland He was an honest German boxer, compact and punchy, who had just won the continental heavyweight title after delivering an expeditious KO to Bernard Thebault. The old Palacio de los Deportes in Madrid burst with hostile public towards the German, a former miner who weighs almost twenty kilos more than Urtain (106 against 88). the genius of Manuel Alcantara He narrates in an unforgettable Time.news that the Basque “does not box, he kicks” a rival who kissed the canvas in the first round, after a crochet on the chin.
Halfway through the third round, Weiland has already received three protection beads, but, writes the teacher, “he gets up again with the face of being lost in the port of Hamburg.” Urtain is short of breath, having never faced such a stoic boxer or suffered the rigors of a long fight. In the fifth round, the Spaniard received a hook in the liver “which had a note inside it and split it in two.” After the seventh bell, the Gipuzkoan must play it face or tail. He goes all in and wins. Summarizes Alcántara: «The tremendous ax blows in the parietals would have knocked down an elephant and they knocked down Weiland. If Urtain learns to box, this is Rocky Marciano. If not, we are before a man who will be crushed ».
The celebration, in the erratic line that Urtain had been showing, is a succession of excesses. The champion is out of control and no one can convince him to train properly to defend his title, which he successfully puts on the line in Barcelona (he beats points to Jurgen Blinkanother German, in a more than debatable decision) and loses in November in London against the local Henry Cooper, his first true elite rival. Later, the typical sad story of the broken toy that, bankrupt and alcoholic, ends his days by throwing himself off a balcony. He had just turned 49 years old.