Joseph Serrano (born April 18, 1984 in Caguas, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican who was an amateur boxing star. Serrano had an award-winning career as an amateur. A member of the Bairoa Gym boxing team, he met, among others, Miguel Cotto during his career as an amateur boxer. Cotto and Serrano forged a friendship as they belonged to the same team. Serrano joined the Puerto Rican Olympic boxing team that participated in Athens. He was widely expected to, at least, compete for a spot in the final rounds of his division, but he lost in the first round of the competition. As a matter of a fact, Alex de Jesús was the only boxer from Puerto Rico to win an Olympic fight from 1996 to 2012. He qualified for the Olympic Games by ending up in second place at the 1st AIBA American 2004 Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Tijuana, Mexico. Serrano then awaited a relatively long time to make a decision as far as to which promoter he would sign with as a professional fighter, but he finally decided to sign with Bob Arum and Arum's Top Rank company. By the time he signed his contract, he had become the last 2004 Olympic boxer from Puerto Rico to turn professional. Serrano made what was his first, and probably will be his only, professional bout on February 26, 2005, as part of the undercard where Cotto knocked out DeMarcus Corley. Serrano beat William Vega by a first round knockout that day. On March 4, Serrano was shot to the head, leg and shoulder on the parking lot at Bairoa Gym, as he stood near the gym's door. He was injured critically, and, because the bullet to his head landed inside his brain, he had to undergo emergency surgery. Serrano was in critical but stable condition at a local hospital. A person has been identified as a suspect: the former boyfriend of a woman that Serrano is friends with. Soon after the shooting, other motives, such as a drug deal gone wrong, for example, were ruled out by police because Serrano is known to be a Christian without any ties with problematic individuals. Whether Serrano will go on boxing as a professional or not remains to be seen, but, it is highly questionable that he will, because of the type of injury that the gunshot to the head produced: according to