Jorge Kahwagi, undefeated Mexican boxer and former congressman, dies at 58.
Jorge Kahwagi was born Jorge Antonio Kahwagi Macari in Mexico City on May 28, 1968. Actor Roberto Palazuelos and Senator Manuel Velasco both posted farewells on Wednesday, with Velasco writing that he deeply regretted the death of his friend from their time together in the Chamber of Deputies.
Entertainment journalist Gustavo Adolfo Infante said on Imagen Televisión that Kahwagi had died of a stroke in Mexico City, and Infobae later reported that Palazuelos gave the same account to Quién. Those statements have not been matched by a public medical report.
The boxing record is the part of his life that still draws argument. Kahwagi finished 12-0 with 12 knockouts, a perfect sheet that ran from a first-round stoppage of Perry Williams on December 10, 2001, through a 2015 bout against Ramón Olivas in Cebu, Philippines.
Eleven of those wins came between 2001 and 2005. In February 2002 he won the Mexican cruiserweight title, and he later added Latin American belts from the WBC and WBO plus a WBC international title in the same division.
The opposition never matched the finish rate. Most of the names on the ledger were inexperienced or inactive, and the perfect knockout record sat under that scrutiny for the rest of his public life.
He did not fight a recognized world champion. He also did not lose. The ledger stayed clean when he stepped away after the Cebu bout, more than a decade after the run that made him a curiosity in Mexican boxing.
Politics ran alongside the ring. Kahwagi entered the Chamber of Deputies with the Green Ecological Party of Mexico and, in September 2005, took over coordination of that party’s bench from Velasco.
He later moved to the New Alliance Party, serving as its president from 2007 to 2011, then returned to the Chamber for the 2009-2012 term. Velasco’s farewell noted that the two had sat together in the LIX Legislature.
Business came from the family. His father, Jorge Kahwagi Gastine, led Grupo Crónica and La Crónica de Hoy, and died on March 23, 2026, at 85. The son had served as vice president of the family’s publishing companies and held roles at Cosmocolor, a firm tied to security documents. He had already stepped back from daily public life after a medical emergency in 2019, and he did not return to a regular media presence after his father’s death.
Television filled the gap between the ring and Congress. Kahwagi appeared on Big Brother VIP México and finished third. In 2009 he was engaged to actress Marlene Favela. By the time of his death he had been largely out of public view for years, which is why Wednesday’s confirmations arrived through friends rather than a formal family statement.
The ring record is what combat-sports audiences will keep. Twelve fights, twelve knockouts, no defeats, and a cruiserweight title run that never had to answer a loss. The questions about who he fought are part of that record, not a footnote to it. Kahwagi was 58.
