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Missing former boxer found safe

A former professional heavyweight boxer featured in two “Rocky” movies was found Thursday morning after being reported missing Wednesday, Mountain View police said.

Pedro Osvaldo Lovell was found safe in Sunnyvale this morning after he had last been seen leaving his residence in the 300 block of Escuela Avenue in Mountain View at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday while going on one of his daily morning walks, Mountain View police Sgt. Saul Jaeger said.

More details about how and where he was found were not immediately available, Jaeger said.

Lovell, whose nickname is “KO King,” had an impressive record as a professional boxer and played the character Spider Rico in the first “Rocky” film in 1976, written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, police said.

Born in 1945 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he also appeared in the 2006 film “Rocky Balboa,” one of the sequels to “Rocky,” according to the film website imdb.com. Early in his seven-year boxing career as a heavyweight, which started in 1970, he fought bouts in San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco, according to the boxing records database website boxrec.com.

In one of his major fights, he lost in a technical knockout in the fifth round to Ken Norton, then the North American Boxing Federation champion, in a heavyweight contest broadcast nationally from Las Vegas on Jan. 10, 1976, according to boxrec.com.

He scored first-round knockouts against nine fighters and finished his pro career in 1977 with 18 wins, 3 losses and 2 draws.

Last modified January 8, 2015 11:57 am

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