Bad Bunny Wrote an Open Letter for the Late Boxer Prichard Colón and Every Word of It Reflects What Puerto Rico Lost

Bad Bunny Wrote an Open Letter for the Late Boxer Prichard Colón and Every Word of It Reflects What Puerto Rico Lost
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Bad Bunny published a letter in El Nuevo Día on Friday honoring Prichard Colón, the Puerto Rican boxer who died Thursday at 33 years old after spending a decade in a wheelchair following irreversible brain damage caused by illegal blows during a 2015 fight. The letter was signed with the artist’s legal name, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, a detail that signals how personally he felt the loss, and it reads less like a celebrity tribute than a heartfelt farewell from someone who had been watching and believing in Colón since before either of them was famous.

Bad Bunny wrote that he grew up watching boxing every Saturday regardless of who was fighting, and that the boxing culture Puerto Rico has built adds a passion that runs deeper than casual fandom to his love for the sport and for the athletes who represent the island. He wrote about being a genuine fan of Prichard Colón from the moment he first heard about him in 2014, when Bad Bunny was recording his first songs in the closet of his bedroom and Colón was building an undefeated record that felt like the beginning of something historic.

What Bad Bunny Saw in Prichard Colón Before Anyone Else Was Paying Attention

The letter recounts a young artist talking about a young boxer with the same enthusiasm he brought to talking about his own music, telling anyone who would listen that Colón was someone worth watching. Bad Bunny wrote that he had a feeling Colón was going to be the next great Puerto Rican boxing star, noting that he had style, technical skill, ring intelligence, power, image, presence and charisma, a fighter who had everything the island needed in a boxing champion. He told everyone around him about Colón with the same passion he used when talking about his music, certain that those who did not already know the name would soon enough.

That belief never wavered even after October 17th, 2015, when everything changed in a fight at the EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Virginia. Colón entered the bout against Terrel Williams with a record of 16 wins and no defeats, 12 of them by knockout, and left it with a subdural hematoma caused by repeated rabbit punches, the illegal blows delivered to the back of the skull that Williams landed throughout the contest. Colón was knocked down twice in the eighth round before the fight ended. He fell into a coma at the Shepherd Institute in Atlanta and never fully recovered, spending the remaining years of his life requiring full-time care and unable to live the future everyone who watched him had imagined.

The Loss Puerto Rico Is Processing

Bad Bunny closed the letter by writing that even though fate took away the opportunity for Colón to become everything he was capable of becoming, Puerto Rico would remember him as a champion. He wrote about another boricua who represented the island and made people proud, and said he never stopped supporting him and never lost faith in him through all the years that followed the fight.

The letter matters because it captures something true about how Puerto Rico experiences its boxing culture and its athletes. The island has produced world champions across multiple weight classes for generations, and the sport occupies a place in Puerto Rican identity that goes well past entertainment. When a young fighter with Colón’s talent and potential has his future taken in a single night by illegal blows that a referee failed to stop in time, the wound is not just personal to his family. It belongs to the whole island, and it stays open for a long time. Bad Bunny writing that letter ten years after the fight, and signing it with his full name, is a way of saying that some losses do not stop hurting because time passes.

What Colón’s Legacy Leaves Behind

One year after the fight, the World Boxing Council created the Prichard Colón rule, mandating penalties for rabbit punches and requiring medical review for any fighter who receives them. In 2021, the WBC named him an honorary champion. His father Richard announced Thursday that he had been able to bring Prichard to Puerto Rico before he died, fulfilling a wish his son had held onto throughout his years in a wheelchair, a detail that offers some measure of peace in a story that has offered very little.

Prichard Colón was 22 years old with the world in front of him when that fight happened. He was 33 years old when he died. The decade between those two moments was one the sport of boxing should never allow itself to forget, and the rule that bears his name is the least it could do to make sure his story means something for every fighter who steps into a ring after him.

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