There are boxers with tattoos, there are heavily tattooed boxers and then there’s Luis Collazo, whose sheer volume of ink work could make Kat Von D stand up and take notice.
If Amir Khan wants to get some ink work done, Luis Collazo knows a guy.
Put it this way: You know you have a lot of ink when you don’t decide you’re done until after you get a head piece.
“I started getting them when I was 15,” Luis Collazo says. “I thought I was just going to get one, but it was totally the wrong thing.”
Collazo has Jesus on his right shoulder and a wizard on his left. Tombstones and cherubs on his arms, a stylized “NYC” across his stomach. Dragon wings and hands in prayer. On his back he has different faces, because sometimes people say things back there they’d never say around the front.
But no one hurt him like the Virgin Mary.
“My first tattoo, my chest took almost 12 hours,” Collazo says. “I sat for the whole chest and it was brutal. After I finished, I was shaking. The next day I caught a fever; I put my body through too much.”
So what’s worse? Getting 12 hours of ink or going 12 rounds?
“Sitting for 12-hour tattoos, man,” he laughs. “You put your body through so much torture. Never again.”
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