My late Best friend, John Martinez

By Frank Baltazar

In mid-1994 John was diagnose with cancer (Leukemia), at that time Connie and I were living in San Diego, one day I received a phone call from John's wife Bea, she told me about John having cancer and that the doctors had told John that he had less then a year to live, we invited John and Bea to come down to San Diego and spent some weekends with us, (They were living in Lake Elsinore), which they did, one weekend in late 1993 we drove down to Puerto Nuevo in Baja, so that John, Bea and Connie could have lobster (Not me, don't like seafood), while we were eating I ask John if he would like a beer or a drink, he told me the doctors told him not to drink alcoholic beverages, I then asked John,
"What else did the doctors tell you?"
"Not to smoke and to kiss my ass goodby" said John
"John" I said "the doctors told you not to smoke and you're still smoking like a train, so have a drink"
He did, then had another one, after that we hire a mariachi for the rest of the day and nite, John had the mariachi sing "De Colores" more times that I can remember, we had a good time reminiscing about our boxing travels.

John died in May of 1994.

See you later, dude...