UPDATED AT 2:14 P.M.

Mickey Goodwin, the Downriver boxer who became Kronk’s first star, died of a stroke in home, Melvindale police said this afternoon.
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Goodwin’s body was discovered about 5 p.m. at the house on Ruth Street in Melvindale he shared with his mother, said Lt. Keith Guyot.

Goodwin’s mother was not home at the time.

Melvindale Police Detective Mike Welch said that Goodwin was not beaten as suspected earlier. Welch said the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office had ruled that the death was not a homicide.

“It looks like he might have had a stroke and fallen down the stairs,” Welch said of the 51-year-old boxer.

Officers went to check on Goodwin after being told that he had not shown up for work at the River Rouge gym where he trained boxers.

Trained by Emanuel Steward, Goodwin won the Golden Gloves title in 1975 and turned professional two years later.

Goodwin (40-2-1, 28 KOs) and Thomas Hearns became Kronk’s “KO Twins,” but it was the young Goodwin, with his Beatle haircut and good looks, who stole the show.

Steward remembered a youngster from Melvindale coming into Detroit, taking off his shirt and knocking out one of Steward’s experienced Kronk fighters.

“He just kept turning up and knocking guys out,” Steward said. “Mickey was the big attraction at first at Olympia and around Detroit, not Tommy.”

Steward said he had spoken recently to Goodwin about coming over to Mickey Goodwin’s River Rouge Boxing Club on Jefferson to look at a young heavyweight he was training.

“I’m just shocked,” Steward said. “He was getting his life together. When he was boxing, he had all the Downriver people following him.

“Mickey was a star.”

Goodwin, however, never won a championship belt. After a draw and a loss in 1985, he went eight years before his next fight. His last came Nov. 29, 1994, when he beat Jamie Stevenson on points in Royal Oak.