Marcel Cerdan Junior, son of the French boxing legend, died on Friday at the age of 81, AFP learned from the president of the French Boxing Federation, confirming information from the newspaper L’Équipe. Sick for several years, Cerdan Jr had himself had a career as a boxer in the 1960s. According to the Boxrec reference site, he had completed his professional career with a 56 victories assessment (including 18 before the limit) for 3 No one and 5 defeats.
“He had an honorable journey. Even if he did not have the physical qualities of his father, he tried to resemble him with the means that were his“Said the president of the FFBOXE Dominique Nato to AFP.”He was a real boxing star in France in the 1960s. He was a great technician who notably made the heyday of the Wagram room“, completed the specialized journalist Jean-Philippe Lustyk. Elder son of the box legend, Cerdan Jr was only five years old in October 1949 when His father died in a plane crashwhile he was leaving for the United States trying to reconquer the global crown of average weights.
Marcel Cerdan Jr grew up without his father but with … Edith Piaf
Once in retirement, Cerdan Jr notably helped to bring the memory of his father to life which he “venerated”, according to Dominique Nato. He had thus embodied the role of his father in the film Edith and Marcel of released in 1983, replacing Patrick Dewae deceased shortly before filming. In 2000, he published an autobiography entitled Piaf and me Au Éditions Flammarion, in which he talks about this woman who was not his mother of blood and gave him so much.
In interview for The dispatchhe confided in the disappearance of his father and the relationship that will be born 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 has always shown himself generous with a lot of people, had placed a lot of money. He had bought a coffee, a farm, a dairy. It was another era and my mother was very surrounded by her family. We were in Morocco and there, we live in clan, at least we lived like that.“
Marcel Cerdan Jr.’s mother, Marinette, had agreed to receive Edith Piaf in 1950 : The star, arrival in charge of gifts, sympathized with her lover’s wife. “”For us, the kids, she has become in forty-eight hours ‘tata edith’. Four months later, Marinette and the three children, me six and a half, René four years and Paul two years old, we landed in the Edith Hotel in Boulogne. She made us dress tailor -made by Ted Lapidus. It is my mother, who, when I was 14, sent me to Edith to live there and perfect my education. “Son of icon, Marcel Cerdan Jr. had rubbed shoulders with icons, while keeping all his humility.
