Bosse Högberg was a smash hit as a boxer, and quickly became one of Sweden’s most talked about athletes.
But after that it went downhill.
When he died, aged 66, he had managed to go bankrupt twice, left Sweden in exile – and was in prison.
Bosse Högberg’s boxing career was short, but oh so successful, and for a few years he was one of Sweden’s most talked about people. He was a huge talent as a teenager and at the age of 17 he won the SM title at lightweight. He was a slugger of the old school, always going forward and on the attack. And on New Year’s Day 1996, it paid off.
Made a smash hit
Högberg defeated Bruno Visitin from Italy in a match for the championship belt in Europe, and Sweden had a new sporting hero. However, Högberg only got to keep the European champion title for a month or so, before he lost in Sweden to the Frenchman Yoland Leveque. Högberg broke his jaw in the match, and although he returned to boxing, there were no more championship belts. Högberg kept boxing anyway, but also started with exhibition matches, where celebrities like Cornelis Vreeswijk often hosted. And Högberg quickly became both a national celebrity – and rich.
In 1966, he married the well-known singer Anita Lindblom, and it was explosive for the newspapers. But when they married, he was already in love with Liz Öberg, then only 16 years old. Högberg had not told Öberg that he was getting married, but she got her revenge, according to some reports.
Bosse Högberg had previously reported his new car, a Mercedes, as stolen, but in fact he had put it down a cliff in Spain. The whole thing became a matter for the Swedish police, and Högberg accused Öberg of having told it to the police.
Flee the country
Högberg was finally sentenced for fraud, and drunk driving, to ten months in prison. Shortly afterwards, Bosse Högberg went into personal bankruptcy, “pauperty bankruptcy”. Two years later, in 1969, he and his wife Anita’s total debt was up to SEK 400,000, so both left the country. Sweden wanted France to extradite the spouses, and a few years later he was sentenced to prison again. He started seeing Liz Öberg again, and in 1976 they married. The following year, Högberg was sentenced to prison again, this time for aggravated robbery and aggravated theft.
In 1988, the year after Högberg’s son died in a car accident aged just 29, Högberg suffered a blood clot. Later he got cancer, and in November 2005 he died, aged 66. Surrounded by Liz Öberg, with whom he was joined from 1976 and 1984, and then from 1989 to 2005.
– I stopped working to be at his house. At the end it was the most difficult. He no longer wanted to live and he finally died in his bed at three o’clock in the morning on the 8th of November 2005. I lay with my head against him and that death did not feel negative. The cancer had taken so much away already. It wasn’t a life anymore, Liz Öberg told Hemmets Journal.
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