Hero out of ring
Ex-boxer saves six from a burning vehicle
Add another knockout to Mitchell Rose’s record.
The former heavyweight “boxing bum” from Brooklyn traded in his gym shorts for a superhero’s cape when he punched out an SUV’s back window, saving six people in the smoke-filled vehicle.
“The old one-two combination kicked in,” Rose, 49, joked.
“It’s a good thing I still work out, so I was strong enough to shatter the window.”
Rose — who famously accused former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson of ripping up his mink coat during a fight in 2001 — was eating at a soul food restaurant on Atlantic Ave. near Rockaway Ave. in East New York about 11 p.m. on Sept. 2 when the Toyota SUV collided with a Nissan at the intersection.
He ran over to help, and quickly realized the five women and one man inside the SUV couldn’t open the doors or windows.
“All the doors and windows were locked and I could not get them down,” Rose said.
“Smoke was filling up inside the car and the people were pretty much suffocating, so I punched out the back window.
“Then we pulled all of them out,” Rose explained.
“I hit it with a right jab. Glass can be pretty hard.”
The passengers — who were between 53 and 81 years old — were taken to Brookdale University Hospital.
Attempts to reach the group — who live on Staten Island — were unsuccessful Friday.
Rose said the group was said the group was “part of some church congregation.”
Johnny Gonzalez was standing nearby when Rose jumped into action.
“I thought there was a movie going on,” Gonzalez, 26, said.
“He was running around the car and running back and forth and then he punched out the window with his hand.”
Rose’s hand was cut and left bloody by the lifesaving punch, but it was old hat to the ex-pro boxer, who had a less than illustrious career in the ring.
The self-proclaimed “bum with a bad boxing record” started his pugilistic path in 1991, eking out a meager 2-9 career before hanging his gloves up seven years later.
He was knocked out during five of his nine losses, according to the website boxrec.com.
His two victories were also knockouts.
In 2001, he claimed Tyson had roughed him up during a war of words at the Sugarhill Restaurant and Supper Club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but no charges were filed.
Rose returned to the ring in 2006, at age 37, but quickly shelved his love of the sweet science after losing two more matches.
He now mentors aspiring hip-hop singers, he said.
His biggest claim to fame was in 1995 when he beat Eric (Butterbean) Esch during an upset at Madison Square Garden.
“That was the night God intervened for me,” he said in a taped interview last year recalling the match.
Saving those strangers was his way of returning the favor, Rose said.
“I didn’t know how they could have withstood all the smoke or why the doors wouldn’t open up,” he said.
“I’m just happy that I was able to save those church ladies.”