Former WBO heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison died in an Omaha, Neb., hospital late Sunday night. He was 44.
Morrison’s longtime promoter, Tony Holden, said Morrison died at 11:50 p.m. with his wife, Trisha, beside him.
Morrison tested positive for HIV in 1996 before a fight with Arthur Weathers, effectively ending his boxing career. In the years that followed, he denied having HIV and also challenged the existence of the virus.
Trisha Morrison, who married Morrison in 2011, picked up that fight, and in a recent interview with ESPN.com insisted that Morrison had Guillain-Barre Syndrome, not HIV.
Holden declined to comment Monday on the cause of Morrison’s death.
“I don’t know what the official cause of death at the hospital will be,” he said.
“You prepare for things like this, and still you feel like you got hit by a truck when you hear the news.”
In 1993, Morrison beat George Foreman to win the WBO heavyweight title, only to lose it to unheralded Michael Bentt in a defeat that scuttled a showdown with Lennox Lewis. Morrison would fight Lewis in 1995, getting knocked out in the sixth round in Atlantic City, N.J.Morrison won his first 28 professional fights, beating faded champions such as Pinklon Thomas along the way. His career reached its apex in the summer of 1993 with the unanimous decision over Foreman, then in the midst of a comeback, to claim a vacant title.
Morrison’s license was quickly suspended in 1996 by Nevada after his positive HIV test, and the ban was, in effect, upheld by every other sanctioning body. Morrison said at a news conference he’d never fight again, blaming his plight on a “permissive, fast and reckless lifestyle.”
Information from Espn.com contributed to this report.