RIP Emile Griffith

A Hall of Fame boxer whose career and life was never the same after he killed Benny "Kid" Paret in the ring at the Garden in 1962. The fight was on national TV, and for many years afterward, NBC stopped televising live bouts.

http://espn.go.com/new-york/story/_/id/9502532/emile-griffith-hall-famer-1960s-dies-75

RIP

 

The documentary about Griffith, "Ring of Fire," is outstanding. It focuses largely on the Paret fight and its aftermath.

The underlying story, of course, is that Paret taunted Griffith with "maricon" (Spanish for "faggot") and that's what so enraged Griffith. Griffith was always rumored to be gay, but didn't publicly acknowledge it until his 2008 autobiography.

 

Ring of Fire is indeed excellent. Although the footage it shows of the end of the Griffith-Paret fight, which is also available on YouTube if you're morbidly curious, is absolutely horrifying to watch. The referee, who never worked another fight, simply stands there for what seems like ten seconds and watches an utterly defenseless Paret absorb numerous punches to the head.

 

Sad news for this longtime fight fan who spent a great night at a hotel bar in Buffalo (he was working a Top Rank card with a very young Riddick Bowe) drinking with Griffith (man, he could put it away) and listening to him tell stories of his days in the ring. Great guy, full of life.

RIP, Champ.

 

Griffith's true legacy is as one of the first big time American athletes to be "widely known" to be homosexual, even if not officially "out", and making that more intriguing is that his specialty was the most masculine sporting pursuit of all: beating the shit out of other men. And, yeah, Paret's gay taunts were the unignorable subtext to that 62 bout where he was literally beaten to death.

A fascinating figure in our sports history. Anyone here who hasn't seen the Ring of Fire documentary really ought to give it a watch.

 

When I interviewed him after "Ring of Fire" came out, his memory was fairly shot... but he was still a gentle man. I'll never forget his smile.

I hope he went comfortably.

 

Here's the link to the Ring of Fire documentary. And the final few seconds of the fight is just brutal.

 

RIP to a tortured soul.