Philippine Sports News and Updates

Doctors at the St. Elizabeth Hospital, where Navarrete was brought for treatment, said the retired boxer sustained a “scratch wound.”

Navarrete, known during his heyday as the “Bad Boy from Dadiangas,” figured in a series of violent quarrels with his live-in partner last year, including an incident where he was attacked in the head with a mallet.

Nurses said Navarrete removed his dextrose about 12 noon Sunday and, against the will of his attending physician, forced his way out of the hospital.

Navarrete said he wanted to leave because he had no money to pay his hospital bill. He described his wound as “gasgas lang” (mere scratch).

Police said the WBC champion in the 1980s confronted a certain Lely Saleling after the woman failed to return the necklace she had borrowed. While they were arguing, Navarete slapped Saleling, prompting her brother Rakman to come to her rescue.

It was the third time Navarette got stabbed. In the most violent attack against him in the late 1990s in Purok Pearly Shell, Bula Village, Navarrete suffered injuries to his internal organs after a man knifed him reportedly over an unpaid loan.

After he met Elizabeth Tamboon, whom he described as the “last woman” in his life, the pair’s stormy love affair often resulted in physical violence.